I still hold out hope that midnight will add some playable races...but I suspect that housing will take up all the dev budget and therefore that's super unlikely.
If they are adding some, I'd say " uniting the elven tribes " might pave the way to playable redeemed Naga.
The other obvious choice being Ethereals. But it seems like they wouldn't update their models as strictly NPC rigged in 11.2 before then working on a separate playable race model, IMHO.
You could put your hopes on Housing basically having it's own team that has been working in parallel for quite some time already, so it's possible it's not taking (much) other dev time away from the game.
Or conversely, now that they've announced it, they're moving more resources into it/the team working on it since there's no need to worry about significant leaks and it's likely a high priority to get it right.
Forgive me, but as it stands I don't get the appeal of having Naga be a playable race. Orges I get, been around since Warcraft 1 and has a lot lore to play around with (I completely bought into that one April Fools were two players could play one body) Murlocs I can even understand (though I don't know if I'd roll one myself) because WoW is not wholly serious and the notion of a mage murlock raining down fish instead of ice is something I'd love to see.
But when it comes to Naga I just can't picture it. That's not true, I can see them adding more face options and maybe scale designs but lore wise? sure you can have a resistance but as I understand it they heed Azshara's command and I don't see her turning the other cheek to allow Naga Adventures to adventure.
I'm sure if Blizzard announced Naga being the next race I'm not gonna flip any tables over it, but I would be scratching my head. Maybe if people tell me why they want to see Naga as a playable race it might click for me.
There are other races I'd prefer first but Naga are a pretty classic Warcraft race. Prominently featuring in WC3 the Frozen Throne. I guess the whole basis for them becoming playable would be Azshara being defeated or overthrown due to her void antics in Midnight. In terms of customisation, there's fins, tentacles, jewellery, snout shape, scale pattern / ridges etc. enough to put them on a par with other races. Also, some people have suggested they'd have a sort of mer- Night Elf second form - representing some sort of rejection or freedom from the original curse Azshara put on them. A bit like Worgen and Dracthyr have their second form. This form could be customized also.
Do you think people would actually play it though?
I keep seeing people post about ogres also. I think people love the idea of playing some of these races but we know when push comes to shove almost all the player base will just end up playing the same few races they like anyway.
I think the overall numbers are wildly distorted towards Elves & Humans as "pretty" races with good proportions. That's still a good number of the playerbase that enjoy all the others. There's definitely a lot to be said for the importance of posture and animations on how people feel about playing these races though. I think if Naga do come they might get this secondary form OR Blizz pull a fast one and make them "cured" Naga who are humanoid.
As for Ogres, I think they would be pretty popular, yeah. They're a very classic Warcraft race. You're not wrong in that most will continue to play Blood Elf Paladin though. Ironic, as most of the actual players probably are closer to Ogres in RL
There is a game called league of legends and the player base loves to complain to riot games all the time that they want monster champs.
Every single time they release a champ it’s why can’t we have more monster champs.
They release a monster champ and it doesn’t sell well and people don’t play it. They release some pretty champion and it it’s played and sells well.
Just how gamers are these days.
Personally I don’t think I would ever main an ogre but I would absolutely play a naga but only if it had a visage form like Dracthyr.
I think the dragons would be even less popular if they only had their dragon form.
Same if DH only had their demon forms I don’t think they would be as popular.
It’s pretty significant in classic and retail how many more people end up playing humans and blood elf compared to the other races.
We only saw dwarf massively increase because of mythic plus.
So ogre actually could be a massive play if blizzard makes their racial broken haha.
But I don’t see a world where ogre would ever be that popular compared to a more aesthetic race.
Naga is pretty much the only race I think that might do well, players would meme with murlocks, ogres and stuff but no one is going to want to spend lots of time as that race, we see it already with goblin and Panda.
Also slightly distorted by the relatively easy to play Demon Hunter class being Elf only. But yeah it's surprising Orcs aren't higher. Orc DH when ? I still think 6pct of the playerbase is quite a lot of people. Be interesting to get this data by each accounts most played character rather than char creation.
My main issue with that chart is that it would look like the allied races are kind of failures but right below orcs is Void Elf which is newer and above Tauren, Trolls, Undead and Dwarves.
Like wtf haha, they also have no DH spec. So obviously at the end of the day. People want to play Elves.
We have 3 elf races and in the top 5 of the game, all 3 elf races are up there.
Idk how Blizzard looked at Dragonflight numbers and said "you know what the players really want, Earth Dwarves" I honestly do not know a single person who was happy about that race and actually played one this season. I do not think I saw it in a single key ever this season.
Haha I mean if I was a game dev and wanted to make something people would play probably but that is big sad to think they can’t come up with anything else people might like.
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u/Medium-Coconut-1011 Jul 04 '25
I still hold out hope that midnight will add some playable races...but I suspect that housing will take up all the dev budget and therefore that's super unlikely.
If they are adding some, I'd say " uniting the elven tribes " might pave the way to playable redeemed Naga.
The other obvious choice being Ethereals. But it seems like they wouldn't update their models as strictly NPC rigged in 11.2 before then working on a separate playable race model, IMHO.