You are so spot on with this, it’s hillarious!
Of course the person you were replying to was being overly and needlessly hyperbolic, but it’s pretty evident (or at least was, since the API broke censuses in November/December) that Gnomes are an incredibly unpopular race; IIRC they were recorded as the least played Alliance race including Pandas but excluding Allied races (i.e. races that are new and have lengthy, grindy requirements to unlock).
We can see that Mechagnomes, being slightly-augmented Gnome, are going to be unpopular too if we look at the trends from other allied races:
- Blood Elves are extremely popular, VE are augmented BEs and are thus also popular.
- (EDIT: Female) Draenei are popular, (EDIT: Female) LFD are augmented Draenei and are also popular.
- Tauren are not popular, the augmented HMT are also not popular [druid exception here because Tauren used to be the only Horde Druid]).
- Dwarf aren’t popular, DID are also unpopular.
Those who try to claim “people are gonna love Mechagnome! they’ll be super popular” are really only trying to convince themselves, because deep down we all know they will be unicorns after the first week or so.
Speaking from numbers, Gnomes are already a race with a very niche appeal. So adding metal bits to them will most likely just take away from players who are already playing Gnomes and prefers the cyberpunk approach over the steampunk one. People who haven’t been playing Gnome before are not likely to pick up one now, regardless of how people feel about the aesthetics of the cyber bits.
I really don’t want to hop on the drama train, but there is a point to be made that races that have already been existing in the respective faction are not likely to be immensely popular. WE can see the phenomenon with HMT and LFD respectively. Both are races that have been available to Horde/Alliance forever, and the arrival f the allied races haven’t had a tangible impact. It’s mostly players who already liked Tauren/Draenei and wanted to try the new antlers/horn aesthetics.
Junkergnomes are a very niche variation of an already extremely niche race. I think it’s very safe to assume that they’re going to be one of the less popular AR choices, regardless of the “quality” of the aesthetics.
Edit:
Anecdotal, but I see a lot more DID than LFD. Yes, Draenei are very popular, but LFD don’t offer anything tangible over playing a “normal” space goat, whereas DID look substantially more badass than normal Dwarves and might sway people who usually don’t enjoy Dwarves.
Edit 2 because I need more caffeine in my system apparently:
Is realmpop com down? I really would like to verify numbers but I can’t seem to reach the site 
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It’s also important to remember that transmog is an important aspect to a gargantuan amount of the playerbase - so, naturally, a race that has completely removes certain slots (bracers, gloves and boots) and limits the visibility of others (sleeves on chestpieces, lower portions of legs/pants) is going to end up being popular.
Of course, if there racials are still overpowered as they were during early PTR (I haven’t bothered checking), that’ll boost usage numbers up because a lot of people pick their race purely based on numbers.
I was basing that off memory of census data of level 120s, rather than anecdotally. Unfortunately, the data is now unavailable since the API changed at the end of the year.
I have no idea how accurate it is but I found something on “world of wargraphs” which does represent similar to what I claimed (this isn’t what I based my comment on, I’ve just found this). I have changed my Draenei statement to be just about female though because, if I’m honest, I kinda forgot male ones exist they are so sparse.
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I think the racials have been nerfed multiple times over. But I don’t really follow that either, I’m a very casual player these days and create characters based on personal aesthetic preference and “feel” (as in: how do I feel a race fits a certain class).
Well, poop. That makes sense.
Seems so, the only other most reliable I can think of is worldofwargraphs. And yes, DiDs are nearly as popular as normal dwarves because:
-they are like the cooler brother with flame hair and glowing eyes. A lot of people not to fond of normal ones were intereszed in them because of this
-they have access to a lot of classes, including shaman and pala
-and most importantly it’s extremely easy to fulfill the requirements for them.
I think the transmog restrictions out of all thing will hurt mechagnomes the most. You rarely see charas without transmog and the options for sets fitting the 2 limb colours of them are very limited.
So if a playerbase favours an unpopular choice (like gnomes) is it then being suggested that their potential wishes should be overlooked in favour of the more popular demographics (ie those who favour elves)? This hardly seems fair to me and like a “tyranny of the majority”.
Nowhere did I suggest that mechagnomes will be popular. I said the poster cannot know for certain that nobody at all asked from them, or will play them, so they should probably stop suggesting things like a 0.5% pick rate or talking about their opinion like it;'s objective fact.
My own prediction will be after about 12 months, MGs will be at about 5% maybe a bit less, Vulpera at about 7%. I don’t think the difference between them will be huge.
Nonetheless, I don’t see unpopularity of a race as being a legitimate reason to discount exploring the race. If it has enough of a core so as to be somewhat sizable (let’s say over 2.5%) then some attention should be given. Gnomes already get overlooked constantly in WoW, very rarely getting any storylines, zones, bases, plot developments or major characters, whereas we constantly have “popular” races like elves, humans orcs thrown at us every single patch and expansion. This problem isn’t helped that whenever they do get something, people complain, and worse than this, they suggest they are justified in complaining because the people enjoying the content they dislike are in the minority, therefore their views don’t count as much as their own. That’s a pretty troubling PoV to hold tbh.
Any good business will try to satisfy all of their customers. Fans of gnomes etc. tend to be okay with very occasional treats thrown in their direction and don’t complain too much, yet still people complain at the very occasional biscuit they have, and argue for more of the content we get every single freaking patch. It’s quite entitled tbh. Just because their like is niche or unpopular it still has a right to be serviced and if people don’t like mechagnomes, fabulous, play any one of the other races that isn’t mechagnomes, they only take up one race slot after all. People need to stop acting like all AR slots exist to only potentially satisfy their own desires rather than try to capture as broad as range of interests as blizzard suspects it’s playerbase to hold.
If we look at some of the player suggestion threads, AR slots might have looked a little like high elves, dead night elves, dead blood elves, san’layn, highborne night elves, night elf worgen, ogres (holy crapola a non-elf!), arrakoa etc.
Now for some people they may look at that as go “awesome”, some might look at it and go “ughhhh”. I’m an ugh on that.
With things the way they are currently; we both have our “cool” and “ughs” on the AR. That is much more fair then one of us getting a complete fan service and the other getting jack all simply because they like something a bit more niche. For me the whole appeal of Warcraft is that it was a fantasy universe that was about more than the typical Tolkien “humans and their elven and dwarven chums” take on fantasy, everything else that made it different stood out. That some people seem to want to make it just another universe about humans and pointy eared humans and short humans is completely missing the charm of what Warcraft was kind of famous for in the first place! Just my opinion of course!
So yeah, if a dude likes cyborg gnomes. Power to them. Not many games where they can play as one of those. Plenty of games where somebody can go and play as a golden haired elven archer if they so wish. (you can in this game as well ofc)
Arguably people are waiting for a “popular” race to be introduced to the Alliance. The reasons given by a lot of people on the blue side of things are:
- Alliance asked for High Elves, got Void Elves
- Alliance asked for Broken, got Lightforged
- Alliance asked for Vrykul, got fat humans
- Alliance asked for Wildhammer, got Dark Iron (a trade up in my opinion, but still)
- Alliance asked for Mechagnomes, got Junkergnomes
Whereas on the Horde side of things:
- Horde got Suramar Elves, a race we literally spent an entire patch liberating. People care about the Nightborne due to the fantastic story of Suramar. The NB were badly executed, but it’s a highly desired race nonetheless.
- Horde got HMT. Whatever. I don’t think anyone was overly excited, much like LFD
- Horde got Mag’har Orcs, and not only the Warsong/Frostwolf, but also Laughing Skull, Blackrock variants. Also got upright customisation option for all Orcs
- Horde got Zandalar Trolls, and after “fan feedback” Blizzard even caved and granted them Troll Paladins
- Horde get Vulpera, which are highly polarising, but still an integral part of the Zuldazar story experience and highly beloved by their fans. The amount of “Dolly and Dot” videos and references alone…
It’s just such a (subjective) discrepancy between what players of each faction asked for and what they received. While I think it’s awesome that the Horde received a lot of great additions to their faction I can’t help but feel that the Alliance got sidelined with almost all of the racial choices. Whether it was malice or just pure incompetence on Blizzard’s behalf, but to paraphrase an old Top Gear episode “it’s like a menu in a Scottish restaurant, not much on it and nothing I want”.
Nothing the Alliance has received so far has been actively asked for and most of the races have been received negatively. Yes, VE are popular, but that is mostly credit to the amazing Thalassian models and not due to the non-existent “lore” or desirability of the race itself.
So the backlash against Junkergnomes is not because people don’t want a minority to have a cool looking alternative (debatable, but I’ll grant you that) but because subjectively all options so far have been undesirable niche additions no one has asked for.
Sorry for the long rant, but I don’t think a lot of Horde players understand the frustration Alliance players feel about being on the backburner for content for an entire expansion. When they lash out to you, please note that most likely it’s not you as a person they’re attacking but it’s rather their frustration that they feel Santa gave all the toys to you and they only got coals.
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I think, though, the way that is presented is kinda emphasising the way alliance got shafted, whilst ignoring that outside of mag’har and kinda Zandalari, the horde haven’t got what they asked for either.
Also, dark irons were requested directly for a very long time. They simply wanted wildhammers as well. They got one of them now, and the next is coming soon.
Alliance’s most popular asks have been:
High Elves (to anyone it should be obvious why they will not get literally blue-eyed belf so imo people shouldn’t not be surprised by velf).
Wildhammers (Coming soon)
Dark Irons (Granted)
Broken (Ignored)
—to a lesser extent
Northrend Mechagnomes (the activity here was never as vast as requests for the above)
So that’s 5 requests
1 directly granted now, another to be directly granted in the future
1 outright ignored (Broken)
and the other two kinda partially addressed. Let’s say that’s worth half a full compliance.
so we have something like 1.5 requests granted now, 2.5 granted soon.
Horde
What horde have actively asked for:
Mag’har - granted
Forest Trolls - Ignored
Ogres - Ignored
San’layn - Ignored
Dead Night Elves/Dark Rangers - Ignored
Zandalari - Granted
And what horde got was Nightborne (a race people did like, but the model does not resemble what got people excited) HMT (nobody really asked for them) and Vulpera as well (who only became a common request in BFA).
So if we consider the Vulpera a long standing request (which it isn’t) we could say Horde will have 3 granted wishes, but also they will have had 4 extremely common requests (especially the first three) ignored. In SL we may be able to say that Forest trolls are granted similar to wildhammer, bringing it up to 4 to alliance’s 2.5.
So the idea that alliance enver get heard, and horde always get listened to, is false. Horde have had more wishes come true, but more requests ignored also. Ogres is without doubt the most popular horde request continually ignored. The second most popular (brown orcs) is granted, similarly the second most popular alliance requests (DID/WHD) are granted/TBG.
The difference is the Horde is asking for races typically that won’t cause controversy or are somewhat distinct enough or akin to their faction. The alliance’s number one ask is a race which is essentially a copy of a horde race. It doesn’t matter if alliance get Broken, or even Arrakoa. So long as the Horde have belf and they don’t have helf, they’ll be convinced they’re never listened to because some helf fans are intensely obsessive with their pursuit of helf. Fact is I don’t see it happening. Velf was the olive branch, to retain enough originality.
I won’t speak for anyone else but if the first alliance AR was literally belf with blue eyes, I would have been extremely peeved off, especially given the horde got a “new” model with their one. Velf spices it up enough to make it somewhat unique and it was clear blizz did it in a way to try and placate the people who simply won’t let it go, without compromising their idea of the factions being too similar with eachother (especially with a race that would be unquestionably popular. It doesn’t matter for Pandaren because Pandaren make up less than 3% of each faction, whereas if both had the exact belf model, well, a significant portion of all players in the game would look pretty much identical to each other. I can see why they’d want to avoid that)
You really understate how much people have been asking for brown Orcs and Zandalari Trolls by distracting with Ogres and Forest Trolls. If everything the Horde has askewd for would be added, we’d have 50 Horde races by now. It still does not change the fact that Mag’har and Zandalari have been highly requested as races for ages, and that their Implementation in the game is stellar. The Nightborne have been highly desired for as long as we’ve seen them by both sides. Since Blizzard have chosen to base them off the already hilariously bad NE model there’s little chance of the NB model being much of an improvement. You might not like the result, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Horde received a race that was coveted by both sides. There has been a very vocal backlash.
I also fail to see how the purple skin colour makes VE so much different to BE, given that everyone is wearing armour on the otherwise identical model. VE were introduced specifically so Horde players would not be upset that the Alliance got something they think they own (which is a ridiculous claim in the first place).
If for every wish you had fulfilled you pull 3 more that weren’t out of your bag then I don’t think we’ll ever reach a consensus. So we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the matter.
I think our opinions are different, but I don’t think it necessarily needs to end. I just don’t share the idea that horde has received a routinely stellar treatment and alliance a terrible one. Alliance has received worse, i’m not debating that, but to say they’ve got nothing, is I believe, wrong.
I believe the issue is they haven’t got the one thing they really want, and have been given a knock-off version of it, and until they get it, they’ll never appreciate those things they have actually been given (Like DIs). It doesn’t mean both sides have got the same deal, it’s just saying what is often touted as being about “general stuff” frequently boils back to one thing: helf.
And it’s not so much about horde “owning the model”. It’s about both sides have variation. If Alliance had got the model first, i’d protest horde getting an almost exact copy of it too. If the game is to have two factions, which are supposedly distinct, I don’t really want the same race appearing in both factions with something like “eye colour” being sold to me as “distinctive racial design” because it isn’t.
Especially when we’;ve seen what blizzard can produce with ARs in KT and Zandalari. To have that potential development energy squandered on a copy paste job I would see as a waste. That’s why I don’t think blizz will do it either, which is why I think the conversation needs to move beyond helf onto other options because then blizzard might actually listen. So long as people keep bellowing helf, I don’t think they will- because it’s not going to happen and it won’t ever happen imo.
Shame about broken though, they really missed a trick there with alliance (especially with Krokul) and I agree alliance got shafted hard on that one. LFD were a huge wtf there. I know broken have been popular since the TBC days. Hell, I know people who were strangely enough huge fans of the “lost ones/broken” type draenei way back in WC3 before the eredar retcon. They’ve always had a group gunning for them somewhere. That’s why the eoriginal draenei announcement was another drama, because alliance were “getting draenei” but not the draenei people thought they were getting. I think they forgave blizzard though because eredar were actually quite cool and the female draenei appeased a lot of people.
will you people ever stop crying? don’t you ever get tired of screaming horde bias?
blizz bent back and over to help you guys with increased bonus rewards from wm, bonus honor, unique mount, etc. and you apes keep shouting horde bias.
no wonder nobody wants to be apart of a faction of 5 year olds that do nothing but cry and whine.
This is something I find really strange.
I’ve always had a lot of gnomes around, and everyone seems to have at least one. I have one too. I hate the camera angle(hence I don’t think I could ever main one), but love the race.
Junkgnomes? Where? All I see in the upcoming Allied Race addition are Vulpera and Mechagnomes. No idea where you’re getting the name Junkgnomes from.
Who are “they” though?
Those who want the high elves, might be very vocal about it, but I can’t say they seem to be missed by most? I guess those who really wanted them would have rolled Horde many years ago, but maybe I am wrong and they have some faction identity that keeps them away from them.
I just feel like there’s a fairly good diversity in what races people prefer. I am a nightelf person(but like to have multiple races though), I have a friend who is a gnome person(he creates nothing but gnomes on Alliance side, and are super eager about the incoming Mechagnomes), and another one of my friends only play dwarves. He tried race swapping to void elf for a short period, but couldn’t do it, and swapped back to dwarf. And so on with people.
Good thing WoW offers a lot of diversity, even though most Horde might be mostly blood elves, while most Alliance might be humans/nightelves.
…on that note. This thread has made me increasingly eager for Mechagnomes. I guess I should start working on that rep after all.
Blood Elf Heritage will have to wait… I think. I’ll do what I feel like the coming week xD .
Because humans, Nelfs, and Draenei account for the biggest part of the Alliance, the difference between worgen, pandaren, gnomes and dwarves isn’t so huge.
And the chance to have a not-druid worgen or a dwarf in raids is the same as for gnomes.
And it’s not a matter if a race is popular or not to predict if a AR will be popular. There are 3times as many orcs as dwarves, but the number of DiDs are nearly the same as brown orcs at 120. Both had nearly the same requirements and were often asked for.
Personally I would like Mechagnomes much more if they atleast were able wear shorts, or had the option which limbs are normal or robot parts. In the dressing room most armour combinations just look unfitting.
And from what I’ve heard so far for most part of the community this is the biggest problem for most other. Not that they are gnomes, but that from the waist downwards it always looks bad.
That is a fair complaint.
As I have said above, I sort of wish they were just added as customization options for ordinary gnomes, but then they would have had to give Alliance another allied race I guess, since Horde were getting Vulpera.
Blizzard changed the API and there is now no way to do a proper census so they shut the website down.
Half of the Allied Races should be simple customization options anyway.
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