No more char customizations in Dragonflight? Please reconsider, Blizz!

Community General Discussion
1

According to Ion, emphasis has been on the Dracthyr in Dragonflight. While I understand this new race has been a big project for the team, I would also just like to point out that many other races are still sorely lacking.

During Shadowlands, it was first mentioned that more customization options would be coming throughout the expansion. Blizzard walked this commitment back at BlizzConline 2020. But after receiving lots of feedback by players online, they once again changed course and chose to address some Allied Races which needed a lot of love.

Hence, we got new options for races like the LF Draenei, Nightborne, and so on. Kudos!

So it is disappointing to hear this news (unless I’m misinterpreting it), that Blizzard won’t keep at it with the new expansion. It’s similar to how the Allied Race system was seemingly abandoned before the Undead and Worgen got their AR counterparts, and how the Heritage Armour sets just stopped coming. At some point it just feels like Blizzard loses interest in these features, despite how passionate players are about them.

Lots of Allied Races (and original races) still need lots of love. This is very important in terms of being able to express yourself as a player. For example:

  • Kul Tiran, Mechagnomes, Dark Iron Dwarves and Vulpera (among others) have very few options in general. It’s just difficult to create a unique character.
  • Void Elves did get a lot of High Elf options from the Blood Elves (although some new hairstyles would be quite welcome). But in the process a lot of people felt like the Void-aspects of the race were entirely neglected. By the way, both Blood Elf and Void Elf players are screaming at the top of their lungs for some ranger tattoos!
  • Glaring omissions still remain for many older races, such as Troll beards, upright Worgen and Undead, and perhaps even new body types or alternate voices.
  • Several features are present on some races but restricted on others, like the ability to have a facial scar regardless of which face option you choose.
  • Some races received some new cool options with the launch of Shadowlands (which is great), while their older options looked so dated that it just feels like there’s more work to be done. For example, Night Elves have many old and traditional Night Elven hairstyles which look very rough around the edges. These older options could definitely receive a glow-up.
  • On top of all this, I am sure many players would agree that more options in general are always welcome. It should perhaps be a regular feature with each new patch.

It’s highly unlikely that Ion will read this and change his mind about it. But I just wanted to express how I feel.

8 Likes
2

WE don’t need anymore customisations.

Finally it looks like we’re going to have a fun game to play, and guess what “No new customisations for existing races”.

Can you finally see the correlation here?

3

We really do, although I respect your opinion.

It’s fine if you feel like we’re in a good place. But lots and lots of players feel the opposite, myself included.

Not sure where you’re going with your correlation, there. If anything, Dragonflight looks promising because they left out temporary borrowed power systems and focused on the core game. It’s not because they left out new character customizations.

6 Likes
4

Hmm, last time characters were updated (was it 9.1?) they said that work on character customization options is continuous, and that other races will be updated.
Now this statement?

Strange indeed.

4 Likes
5

Characters customisation just doesn’t add to the game play experience though. Having some extra Tattoos doesn’t really add any value to the core of the game.

It’s better that they concentrate on making a great game play experience, and then add the customisations at a later date as a bonus. Not the other way round.

Right now, I’d rather the concentrate on the game, than a couple of new hairstyles for Void Elves.

The correlation is simple.

When the game started concentrating on Character Customisations, the quality of the gameplay went down, sharply.

Now Dragonflight is looking very promising to be a good game. But there are no new customisations being added.

Money and Budget put into Game Play = Better Gameplay
Money and Budget put into Art = Worse Gameplay

6

That’s your opinion, and that’s fine.

But it adds a ton to the gameplay experience for me. I am what you might call an immersion dork. I don’t play for the challenge of being the best player around, I don’t care much about raids, M+ or PvP. What I enjoy about WoW is the ability to play with others inside a massive, fantasy world.

Being able to express myself through various characters is hugely important to me. But not only that. I also take pleasure in identifying various character archetypes on Azeroth and trying to recreate them as alts.

For example, Elven Rangers from Warcraft 2 are pretty iconic to us older players. Until recently, you couldn’t play a High Elf on the Alliance. But then we got the Void Elves. They didn’t have pale skin, blonde hair or blue eyes though. So we got that. But they’re still missing ranger tattoos!

Another dude I see on Twitter sometimes has been asking for Troll beards for god knows how long. Clearly he and many others feel passionately about that.

Your correlation between cosmetics and gameplay quality is still false, though. Legion had a ton of cosmetics (Artifacts, Order Halls, etc.) and was still great. BfA and Shadowlands had a bunch of gameplay systems but weren’t that great.

2 Likes
7

Yeah, it’s a shame. I hope I misunderstood his answer to Towelliee, but it sounded pretty clear.

8

Allied races should have never been a thing.

They should bake those into customization options for the base 5 races and expand more.

And yes, its criminal they are not planning ANYTHING so far…

9

very strange.

1 Like
10

I’m not that interested in being the best player around either. Although I do enjoy abit of M+.

What I enjoy most is having fantastic quest lines to follow. Having goals to achieve and things to work towards.

I also enjoy collecting transmog and dressing my character to a degree.

But I don’t think right now, Character Customisation is what is needed to make WoW a better game.

Right now, I think they’re onto a good thing and they should carry it through with minimal distractions.

Customisations can be added in 10.0.5 or 10.1. But 10.0 should be for game play.

Oh you’re one of those cry babies.

You’re the worst. You know, you could have just played Blood Elf, but instead you cried and cried and cried and forced Blizzard to add a few hair and skin colours, instead of concentrating on making Shadowlands good.

No it’s very true.

Not really, not to the same extent that customisations were added in Shadowlands launch.

Still it doesn’t matter.

Right now. New customisations are not needed to make the game better.

Later in the expansion I can get behind, but for launch let them concentrate on making a good product.

Because if the game continues to fail, they won’t have much of a player base, which means no money, which means no budget for customisations.

12

I was reading your response with interest, and meant to write a thought-out reply. But then I got to the part where you called me a cry baby and said I’m “the worst”. So I won’t spend another second talking to you. Bye.

13

Agreed. One could argue the character customizations were one of the few saving graces of the expansion. Honestly, without it I wouldn’t have many fond memories.

2 Likes
14

that’s fine, because I hold you personally responsible for the downfall of this game.

It’s disgusting how you make demands on such pointless things like Character customisations, when the game play is falling apart.

Good riddance and good bye.

15

It’s not really.

Basically the game has a budget. That budget needs to split amongst various things such as:

Game Design, Development
Coding
Art
Sound
Market
etc etc etc.

Now I appreciate that Art goes hand in hand with Marketing, because having Good Art (i.e. Character customisations, Cool looking armor, mounts etc), sells the game.

However, what keeps people playing the game is good game play, not art. So you need to balance both.

So if you put more of that money into Art (i.e. Character customisations), you’re taking that money away from something else, which is most likely Gameplay Development.

Yes, but they’re working on one theme throughout the whole expansion. Not on multiple old races which have nothing to do with the current theme of the game.

Old races can be added to later on in a .5 patch, not in the main patch .0 patch.

Once again, the theme of the expansion.

Then you don’t speak for the community either.

I’m speaking what is proven to be good for the game. No a few kids who want to dress their barbie dolls.

16

only i never used “we” in my comment, you did.

i think this right here is a clear sign i should end the conversation with you. Have a nice day :smile:

4 Likes
17

But we don’t need new customisations.

You might want Customisations. We don’t NEED customisations.

Customisations don’t make or break the game. They’re an extra.

Thank the loa!

I’m tired of these customisations cry babies.

Just enjoy the game the way it was intended.

18

TBF we have had some nice new customization options like dark ranger and high elf skins, also the meatier undead was fairly recent.
I think it would be nice to offer some more options for the core races though like orcs and humans.
Scars are somthing that would work on every race and tattoos could be added to most races (or paint on fur). Also I feel like alot of races could have more ornamentation both in hair and jewelery…either gold/silver, bone/leather, for eg depending on what suits the race.

19

What are you even talking about lmao

1 Like
20

Some of the allied race still have the bare minimum in terms of customization, such as Kul Tiran, Dark Iron Dwarves, Zandalari, and the list goes on.

I wish they would just finish the work they started, possibly not in 10 years from now.

4 Likes
21

Yup this for the most part. Like Lfd and highmountain could’ve been baked into their original counterparts. Nightborne were unique enough to have their own slot but were so bare minimum when they came out and void elves were to appease the alliance high elf peeps.
But basically could’ve still left some empty slots for all new and unique races to join in later.