A bit offtopic, but since I claimed that I thoughtJunker Gnomes were a top candidate for an allied race, I wanted to correct myself a bit:
While they do fit the model of “slightly changed already playable race”, there are two big problems:
Optics:
Going by the Blizzcon-pictures arms, legs and head attachments are mechanical… which kind of makes armor on these slots strange. Especially considering how stick-thin they seemed. Are we supposed to wrap Junker Gnomes in clothes that go over all the mechanical parts? Won’t the head attachments lead to horrible clipping with helmets and even goggles?
We could of course get less mechanical versions than the ones we saw… but that would also make them less interesting.
Classes:
What classes should they actually be able to play?
Rogue, Warrior, Hunter - Of course, though even the rogue seems a bit strange.
Mage, Warlock - Do they have their own self-taught magic? A bit hard to imagine mages in their robes as part of the Junkers…
Monk - Can you really imagine that?
Priest, Shaman, Paladin - Just no. They certainly wouldn’t be more spiritual than other gnomes, and they have no Alliance to bring them the Light.
Druid - now that’s a good joke. Transformer-Gnomes with mechanical forms? Well, I guess they could even go that far, but druids have quite a lot of spells that all use nature themes and that would all have to be redesigned to fit some other theme. Never going to happen.
DH, DK - Nope.
So… in the best case I could grant them… all the gnome classes… minus DKs and Priests. 6 classes. That isn’t much. And if I only took what I really found fitting… it would be Warrior, Hunter and Rogue. That’s nothing.
I can see mage… from 2 angles… if they are iin jured kgnomes reparied by mechagnome tech=nology, some of them could have been mages
on the converese if they are mechagnomes partailly afflicted by the flesh curse thing, then their titan origin should be a plausibleexplanation of mage craft outside elven tutelage.
Warlock… i doubt it. Mechagnome and titan base is anti demon. And warlocks only came to the gnomes a few years ago at the start of wow.
If Nightborne and other new allied race could be introduced to monks, then i will struggle to think how mechagnomes wouldn’t.
ofc not.
Gnome druids could instead be piloting mechanical versions of bears and cats. and an arcane enhanced mecah suit for balance form… who knows.
So… Mekkatorque gets some upgrades, and as a result gnomes can choose one or more upgrades as customisations for themselves? Like the Night Warrior eyes? Ok, I’d take that gladly.
Even if it meant Gnomes wouldn’t get an allied race?
I prefer the version of mechagnomes shown at blizzcon to the traditional full on mechagnome or leper gnome as an allied race.
I’m not so sure they are even going to be called junker gnomes. I mean the allied race. In the blizzcon presentation I think I recall them showing and mentioning 2 versions. You first meet the lower grade junker gnomes in the scrap yard, and then you meet their fancier versions which were a form of mechagnome no t previously seen before.
Anyway, I’m waffling. I quite liked the mecha gnomes shown at blizzcon over the existing all machine mechagnomes which i struggled to envision as an allied race. And I feel they are more appealing than the leper or diseased gnomes…
so if not htis for an llied race for gnomes, then what would you have?. Giant gnome?
I’m betting on junker gnomes being priests and paladins, using the Light as simply another force of magic, and call their paladins something weird, like “photonic warriors”.