I’ve watched the LOTRs a bunch of times, the halfling visual style seemed a bit mutilated to me.
That kind of doesn’t make sense.
The Zandalari trolls are AWESOME and their reception has been super cool, I’m willing to bet the alliance would’ve been insanely hyped if the put Vyrkuls or some shorter half vyrkul - half human version instead of Kul’tirans, or if the horde got Ogres or Mok’nathal ( half ogre - half orc ) instead of vulpera.
If I could upvote your post more I would, 100/10 effort.
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Well zandalari maybe cool, but looking at reception on KT, Gnomes, draenei (who have so bad racials you barely see any of those over normal draenei) - they ae lackluster and you barely see them in world either.
Iron dwarves have gained some attention, but not even nearly as much as void elves.
Yeah they don’t need to be entirely unique, I just see some irony around people being happy with a quick skin texture swap if it got them high elves/san’lin but go vocal on a new variety of gnome which quite different from the standard gnome in terms of appearance and configurability.
My principle issue is that such a race doesn’t exist.
I’ve followed warcraft for a very long time. Longer than wow. Halflings or similar don’t exist in Azeroth or Draenor. The short races whom resemble humans are dwarves, gnomes and pygmies (and goblins to a lesser extent).
Not one of them is proportioned well. That’s because blizzard doesn’t do proportions. Most racial concept art is waaaaaay out of proportion. Look at original dwarf art on Sons of the Storm for example by Didler (sp?) 75% muscles, 10% beard, 15% whatever else.
Even humans have wierd proportions. Look at original pally concept art for wc3. Hello muscleman and pinsize head. We’d call him a steroid abuser in RL. The warcraft world just isn’t for that realism tbh.
Anyway back to my point. Such a race would need to be invented. So we’d need a clear in game prescience before I’d entertain the idea of them being AR. I’m not a fan of AR being the first we see of a race (velf) as for me it’s bad immersion and storytelling.
This said although I’d accept it, I’d not enjoy it. Alliance needs more versatility, not less. Their various “huamnesque” races just about work because of oddities like body shape and size alongside exaggerated cultures. I’m not sure hobbits or similar (aka proportioned small folk who have a rural and relaxed culture) would really add anything and simply homogenise the alliance further.
What the alliance needs to take votes away from the Horde is races that are different from being human like. But plausible.
Think Jinyu
Think Tuskarr
Think Sprites
Stuff like that. Not small humans or humans with pointy ears. That’s just my opinion anyway.
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I love kul tiran. id rather play as big bulky humans with rural British accents whom have reason to join the alliance than big bulky humans with bad nordic voice acting who have no reason to join alliance “because vikings”.
And no to half-races. I will tentatively accept high elves (even if I think it’d be a waste), but half elves are literally what even. Humans who look good with slightly slanted ears. Just no. One thing I was glad of when I came to wow from EQ is that the races weren’t just “humans, give or take an inch or two and pinch their ears to varying degrees”. Gnomes looked different from dwarves who didn’t look anything like humans, rather than just squatter humans with beards. This said EQ did get bestial races right (Frogloks, Vah Shir, Iksar) just the humanoid ones were a bit yawn in terms of differences.
On the topic of non-human races, I think ethereal, fairies ( the one that went to war with the furbolgs in northrend ) and Arokka would fit perfectly, for Alliance that is.
Furbolg, yes, one tribe is allied with nelf at least.
Arrokoa, I don’t know enough about wod to claim this but I don’t know of a factional away.
Ethereals are neutral, unless you write in a band of them whom are Locus Walkers boys, but as far as I know, he’s a lone operator.
Blizzard need to have the alliance interact with bestial races more often in cooperative ways. Often horde get it because they’re often given such a race to interact with (either because it resembles one of their races or its just “another noble savage” race), alliance interact with not-quite-humans. It’s a vicious circle.
Like, i saw a thread some time ago about how it’d be cool if Satyr were in given their new wc3 remastered model. The lore would need to be heavily updated/bent for this, but it’s stuff like that we need. Not just humans or elves (but I will say, kul tirans are freaking awesome, mainly because as far as humans go, they don’t look terribly normal haha). Alliance needs plausible, “cool” and different races. This is why Worgen were an excellent addition when released. They’re plausible, they’re not out of place (hold alliance values) but they are threatening and menacing.
More things in that vein please. Its easy to give alliance another human race because it takes less thought. You wanna claw back players? You gotta think. And no, high elves no thank you. That’s a cheap and low budget answer to the issue.
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That is not a sex life i want to imagine
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Just… Take a moment to consider the question “Why?”
A majority of people don’t fancy the idea of being a fat human.
A majority of people don’t enjoy being a pint-sized humanoid creature.
Not sure where you get the idea that Draenei aren’t popular, as I see Draenei ladies often (Yeah, I got back to Retail WoW to grind reputations, sue me and my Classic Hiney!). If anything, male Draenei aren’t that popular… Probably has to do with the truck-sized torso against the twiglike legs.
That’s because people are stupid and absorbed with vanity. Not saying this to be mean, but because it’s something of a truth. People’s excuses to playing an Elf or a Human race often comes down to “I want to feel like i can relate to my character” or “The other races are ugly”. Basically people don’t like the idea of playing a race that looks nothing like a human, and so they want races that look close to Human…
…Then there are people who want High Elves because “Muh Elves” and because they don’t like how Humans look.
Draeneis are popular, but due to lightforged draenei being so indistinguishable from other draenei people make some of them as alts, but you do not really see them in world. And their racials vs other draenei is meh at best. So raiding alliance tends to favor old draenei because of it.
Horde races are more unique and better looking than their old ones - zandalari and nighborne have the night elf posture and aesthetics. So Blizzard has gone on way of beautification of Horde and making Alliance a niche faction. Both PvE and RP - or at it least feels like that.
Well I have to admit that I cannot play short races because of my role. Already i had problems with human and worgen (which isn’t THIS much shorter from night elf) dk compared to my night elf. I have used toys to make myself undead, gnomes, tauren and all others and when i am tanking the view point change does matter - so I normally remove toys if they shorter from night elf. Initially same problem i have with druid tank - due to bear form their view point is too low for my taste.
Likewise in vanilla wow I did not roll ‘human’ because why play a fantasy game and roll a human. If I want to play human i just look in the mirror and scream FUS RO DAH!
Nowadays I just dislike human animations on classes I like. i do have both human dk and human monks (my current primarily played classes) and I just … don’t like. Monk is not as bad as they have unique animations, but somehow human does not feel as cool as night elf.
Nice wee Hobbit minstrel ya got there I myself have one too Safa Saffron the minstrel and a warden named Dillbo Swaggins always prefered hobbits (halflings) over gnomes
When looked up gnomes I get the garden gnome variety and gnomish butts… middle fingers and speedos stuff that wasn’t prepared to see actually and they look quite different then WoWs gnomes especially in the head
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Those proportions look too human to me.
Gnomes are gnomes, not shorter/half-humans.
Thing is, the title of the thread is a little misleading, because, the gnomes in game -are- properly proportioned! That’s what Gnomes in WoW look like! They’re not just short humans, which, with the best will in the world, is all that Hobbits and Halflings are, which is why ultimately, they are pretty dull. They have a bigger head, because they need it, they have larger eyes, for better vision, given that they originally lived underground post ‘Curse of Flesh’…Subterranean creatures tend to go down one of two paths, their eyes either atrophy and they just don’t bother with sight as a sense, or their eyes become more developed so that they -can- see in such conditions. Looks like Gnomes went the latter way. They have excellent Hearing and sense of smell also, Basically all of their sensory organs -are- bigger in proportion than a humans, which makes -complete- sense! I mean they are an entirely different species, they only have four digits on their hands and feet, same as Goblins (This may be why Gnomish/Goblin Engineering have to be learned especially, as they are likely to have evolved a mathematical system based on 8, not 10 as we did in Real life. A Gnome is pretty damned Apex model for something living where they did, Hobbit type ideas would have them stumbling about, turning their heads wildly, in fact, lets be fair. They’d be extinct. They would not have survived the Trogg incursion.
Gnomes are pretty damned awesome as they are, because they look like they are supposed to: A -Different Species-.
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This ain’t my video 
I don’t even have my own youtube channel this is just an example video I posted.But I agree wow gnomes are very unique in a sense that it’s true no mmo is going to fit them.
What you’re saying is basically make them look like human children (but with beards and wrinkles).
Seems weird.
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I just want to play something that doesn’t look like it’s whole physique was made to be puntable.
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lets take all gnomes and cut them all in half and call them halflings.
onley good gnome is a dead gnome.
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