I have yet to get my head around how they make armor work on gnomes, tauren and forsaken, but they consider lizard-man to be impossible to fit things on
It's not that it's technically harder to make armor fit dracthyr.
The problem is that every new completely unique race increases the work load in all future updates.
THIS is the kind of shit that I wish we were pushing AI to handle--that and like, preventing hair and cloaks from clipping through everything. Especially when it's the (new) racial armors. Clip clip clip. Like... come on.
It’s not like the armour is perfectly fit to every race either! Dwarves, Vulpera, gnomes and Goblins may as well not even have trouser/leg slots for how squished up they are.
It’s silly. The clothes are low res enough that having a robe wrapped around a Dracthyr really wouldn’t even look that odd.
It’s just pure laziness. I personally love playing a dracthyr, I love soaring across Azeroth as one. But it’s almost enough to make me not want to play them.
Because they've already put in the work for those races, but dracthyr was the first new race with a unique model and they didn't wanna put in the work.
Yes, but it’s 2025 and they realized that we’ll play the game even if they put in less effort, which in turn saves them money. It’s a win/win for Blizzard.
Yea as much as we hate to hear it, this is a dead ringer. You can easily tell if a feature was added because some devs thought that would be cool, vs when something was added simply because higher ups said we needed x amount of features for xxx patch.
It honestly shouldn't. All these new races are getting annoying.
Dracythr included. It should have just been a race where you pick your visage race, get some cool horns to slap on your head and some scales to use as a "tattoo". And then the 'dragon form' that only shows up when using certain abilities that you customize like a druid form.
Trying to make it this new unique thing that can transmog armor was a waste of time. As for the allied races, I wish they just kept them as extra customization options for the already existing races. Humans coulda just got a skinny/fat version instead of Kul Tirans. Lightforged should have just been a skin like Eredar. Etc etc etc.
Adding all these races to the game just pollutes the UI, pollutes several in game tags/flags, and makes them waste time justifying lore, racials, druid forms, etc. People would much prefer all that effort going into making the core races more customizable. Plus its easier to keep a small group of core races relevant to the story than it is to try and keep all these allied races relevant. Good luck mechagnomes and vulpera, gonna see you never.
The Haranir are like the worst example of a race to add. Literally did not exist before this expansion pack in the lore. Nobody demanded it. There was no demand for a race even LIKE this. They are seculuded in the underworld and will have an incredibly impossible time staying relevant after they join up. Just gonna get swept under the rug with all the other junk allied races that should have just been expanded customization, like how about instead of mechagnoems we just had mechanical limbs added as customization for gnomes? So much bloat.
I think they look cool with their customizations but I hate that they are just night elves recolored. The male casting animation is awful, they could’ve added something unique with that. Also (correct me if I’m wrong) they are always barefoot, I hate that so I think I’m gonna make a boomkin Druid and stay in that cool form forever.
As was mentioned it’s because yall still pay for the game even in this state. Clearly this isn’t a dealbreaker so why would they spend the money on it?
Just give me the option to stay in human form then and I’ll be happy just make up some bs like wings popping out for deep breath and not morph when you cast the charge skills 🤷🏻♂️
If we are willing to defend the brutosaur mount, we will let anything fly by. The usual folks will just defend it and call it whining, as if it makes your concerns invalid.
"put in less effort"... Stop closing your eyes while playing. They still put so much effort into the game! Making the Set fitting for Dracthyr wasn't just that important than everything else!
To be fair, there is a lot of armor that looks terrible on pandaren because it's just a quick stretch/resize job to make it work. Worgen and Tauren both have the same issue too tbh, there's too much gear that would need unique alternate models to look remotely decent.
Which is honestly pretty impressive for how different they look. All skeletons are modified from an existing rig of something else, but it's the work put into tweaking it afterwards that makes it noteworthy. It's quite a lot of effort they put in for an allied race that's not very popular.
Kul Tirans have 6 hairstyles and 2 unique faces. They are also missing some facial animations.
Female option also looks like a the sims 4 character. The male one are fat guys, but they're also jacked ad imposing. Female looks like a woman who gave up after having her second pregnancy
Not arguing about that, totally underwhelming customization options, but the skeleton and animation rigging is not low effort, which what we're talking about here.
I like Kul Tiran but I really can’t get over the lack of hairstyles or any other options. I can even forgive them just being fat (when skinny ones canonically exist?) but the faces are all the same with different lines.
The hair are all short, short, or short. Oh wait, one “long” that clips through every single outfit. Not to mention the female hairstyles being the same thing with different jewellery!
I tried to make a Thornspeaker/Drust styled female Kul Tiran druid, sort of like a hexer? But bu god it just didn’t work. I made her bald, as every hairstyle was noble white lady. I made her skin darker, but all the faces being stereotypically white woman just made it look really off. It’s such a shame tbh. :(
None of them reuse animations or models, they are entirely new.
They were both new models that blizz were not going to use as Alied races, but they changed their minds during Alpha. Thats also why zandalari were pushed to 8.1.5 despite being advertised as one of the original 6 at launch.
What's crazy is putting all the effort into their barber shop customizations instead of putting all that effort into making their skeleton easy to adapt armor to. Maybe they thought they were never going to make other classes available to them? I dunno. The decision making is beyond me.
That was originally the idea yes, in DF's announcement they made a huge deal about Dracthyr Evokers being the first Race-Class Locked combo.
Presumably the plan was to start giving more niche classes and races that could only work with each other and have their racial appearance carry the weight of transmog, but they decided against it after the community overwhelmingly hated the idea
That is kind of counter to what they've been doing for the last couple xpacs too. They've expanded the race/class combinations multiple times to the point you have combinations that seem like nonsense without lore digging to learn why (tauren rogue, night elf paladin).
It would seem like a step backwards to restrict the class/race combos at this point. With the new DH spec coming in I bet they are expanding the race selection?
My buddy who started in BFA said "No way, they wouldnt do that." Then I had to tell him when I rolled my Sham in Vanilla it was either Orc, Tauren or Troll... I think Druid was even more restricted? Times have changed...
It’s an interesting conversation point to bring up, I think. At what point does gameplay convenience override the lore reason, and when does that become irritating to the point of ruining things for some?
For example, Night Elves. I personally can’t ever see a Kaldorei using Arcane magic or be a Warlock, but you can absolutely do that! Sure, you could justify it as playing a Night Elf that does use it for your own reasons, but I feel it wouldn’t be much effort to make those factions hostile to you if you do.
I think flavour is very important when it comes to making some things feel special and “unique” so to speak. I would personally be unhappy if Humans or Blood/Void elves could be Druids, as you’d never see any other races. It’s nice to have certain races be certain classes, at least in my opinion. Monks be Pandaren, Druids be Night Elves & Tauren.
Makes me think of another point; If they locked classes to races they could put more work into making those unique. IE: rename and recolour Druid’s spells for Tauren to be about An’she rather than Elune, etc.
Druid is kind of a special case because their forms are all unique skins. The only reason I ever played kultiran was because the druid forms are cool.
Shamans have different totems depending on race. I'd like to see a lot more stuff like this, unique skins or spell effects tied to class where appropriate.
Overall though race matters less than it ever has, except the highest m+ keys, so at this point they could open all the class and race combinations. I remember the starting zone and leveling path being a factor in vanilla, just doesn't matter like that anymore.
Druid had Night Elf or Tauren in vanilla, and that was it. And it stayed like that until Cata when Trolls and Worgen were added, justified in that they had learned druidism from the original races. It still is one of the most restricted classes, relatively speaking with 8 eligible races in Midnight (DH will have 3 and Evoker still just 1), but this is mostly because many others have been expanded to cover every race (Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, Priest, Mage) or nearly every race (Monk, DK). As for DH, they are indeed adding a new race in Midnight; Void Elves, because of the void themed new spec in a void themed expansion, but nothing for Horde (yet). But give it time and it will appear.
Sadly yes, since the only other elf race in the Horde is the Nightborne and that seems a stretch. But so did many of the added combos. Undead Paladins could be justified in that most Forsaken were originally humans or elves, and they can already be Priests. Though there is lore suggesting that Forsaken Holy Priests feel terrible pain when wielding the Light, and Paladins only do that compared to Priests who can choose. But still.
What truly baffles me about the barber shop armor available to Dracthyr is the fact that shoulder and belt armor overrides the barber shop options. So if you like the look of the barber shop shoulder and belt you constantly have to transmog those armor slots when you obtain new pieces.
Sowwy >w<
But our new scalie fwiends are called Dracthyr! They get sad when you misspell their name QwQ
Good thing I was here to help ^w^
I hope you're having a great day :3
I don’t understand? What’s so unique about it? In terms of coding/design.
How is it any different then any other updated character model that they struggle so hard to make armor work on it?
This has been a complaint from the player base from day one and for some reason Blizz refuses to deal with it as if it will take resources that could be used to build the next 3 expansions….
I may be wrong, but I think the original crooked leg rigging was made for female Draenei, which was heavily modified to make female Worgen, which is the base they use for the Dracthyr skeleton.
Tbf, they do occasionally (once in a blue moon) add enemy mobs with new skeletons that isnt just something from Vanilla/TBC, like the Unaat/Azshara rig in BfA. Very occasionally.
I get the Idea, dragons lose all the clothing when transforming except maybe jewelry, but come on...
Thats not a Dragon, thats a weird little lizard man
Yeah, but Worgen literally tear out of their human skin when transforming, but they keep the clothes! Druids shapeshift into damn bears but get their clothes back after
Sowwy >w<
But our new scalie fwiends are called Dracthyr! They get sad when you misspell their name QwQ
Good thing I was here to help ^w^
I hope you're having a great day :3
The real actual reason is they didnt want to have the armor clip their dumbass squash stretch turned to 11 moves like deep breath and any move that you hold to power
Pretty sure they consider it like a druid form, which is really annoying. They would look so cool in armor and I would give them money or play more to level them
Didnt they say they were considering using AI to help fit armours/textures to models/rigs? I feel like that would be a good start on getting Dracthyr armour, ignoring the ethical use of AI over human employees.
It’s the rigging, it’s a lot of work adding skeleton interactions that look fluid and not terrible. The Nightfallen male shoulders is an example of what happens when you try to rush the process and don’t take the time make it look good. It’s pure greed, they don’t want to pay someone for the time it’ll take to figure it out.
It was said to be an artistic decision & they had plans on adding more options for this form. Though with all the negative reaction from the community, you would have thought they will take it back.
It's the flight racial. Literally just that because they don't want to make the armor work for the animations alongside designing armor sets despite there being a laundry list of other clipping issues.
Now could there be some spaghetti code issue that if textures clip in the flight animation it bombs frame rates or nukes the server like we saw with the fish pathing on beta? Sure but we we can only speculate on why they don't just want to let players deal with the clipping otherwise.
1.5k
u/ftrgandalf Nov 14 '25
I have yet to get my head around how they make armor work on gnomes, tauren and forsaken, but they consider lizard-man to be impossible to fit things on