Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Race Matters?

As most of you know now, race changes have been implemented. Just like faction changes, you can now pay $25 to change your race in faction. This means considerably fewer Undead and Tauren out there on the raiding scene. And because of this reason, I really don't like it.

Long time readers know I detest homogenization. I simply cannot stand the simplification of anything. Diversity, intricacy, complexity are parts of what makes life beautiful and interesting. It is, regardless of how desperately people wish to think otherwise, how the world works.

Now, because of racial attributes, people can pay more money to increase their raid abilities, and a little bit of what makes the game fun dies. The fact that innate talents given to specific races statistically insignificant DPS benefits over others, punishing (however insignificantly) those that didn't recognize at the time of their rolling of their character five years ago. You should not be taxed for an aesthetic.

This is another account of one enjoyable condition of play being divided between PvP and PvE. Like the BC days, one side of a play aspect is "obviously" PvP oriented while the other has free reign. Specs are normalized finally, thankfully, but now you are being penalized for your choice of race.

The racials do not make or break the class' ability to pump out the numbers. After all, you don't see every progressive guild going Alliance for the free talent point. They do provide a difference, that's an annoying fact that cannot be denied, but in the grand scope of things, that difference is tiny. Not something worth an additional $25, in my opinion.

10 comments:

Pike said...

Yeeeah... same reason why I dislike spec-of-the-month, same reason why I dislike pet-of-the-month (I still refuse to use a wolf)... I dunno, I like to see different types of things running around Dalaran, not everyone looking exactly the same!

Pike said...

Also, screw racials, female tauren >>> all *high five*

Negathle said...

You know, the only reason I can stand the wolves are the better pool of models for them. As opposed to cats, there are at least three different skeleton models for wolves, so it "looks" like there is more diversity than there is.

It also helps that my first pet was a wolf :3

Spitt said...

It seems to me, that Blizzard is going with a whole "lets mix free2play with pay2play". I just worry that we are on the road to paying for services that will make us better then others.

I wrote a larger rant about it here.

Pike said...

@ Negathle - all I ever see on my server are the worgs from Storm Peaks. That is all. If more people were using the pretty wolvies from Mulgore or Dun Morogh it wouldn't bother me so much. But I think the worg model is ugly >_>

Anonymous said...

Aye. Dwarves are great and I would be a Dwarf if Draenei weren't purple and didn't have elephants for mounts. Just because Dwarves have less-than-ideal racials doesn't mean they can't be awesome at endgame. Yet I would bet Dwarves are the least selected race when it comes to faction- and race-changes. Hunter? Go Draenei or NE. Pally, rogue, or warrior? Human all the way. Priest might be the only class that goes Dwarf if only because the other races don't offer anything for them (Shadowmeld?). Sad.

I don't know what Horde race we'll lose. Dwarves are rare already, they might be gone by Cataclysm.

Criven said...

@Pike, I'd assume they're the level 80 Worgs from UK/UP heroic.

The reason people are using them is that they're an "out of the box" pet. You don't need to level them up.

I've been meaning to grab a better looking Wolf for a bit, but it's a choice of either dumping an old favoured pet or speed levelling the pet 5 levels in time for a raid.

Fig said...

As I said on my Twitter: screw orcs. Personally, the blood elf population could be bled a bit ;)

I'm just waiting for cataclsym and I'll be changing my pally's race to tauren, because tauren are awsome. Just not as awesome as trolls are.

Pike said...

@ Criven - I'm quite aware that that's the reason. I guess it's just such a foreign concept to me. I'm that person who would level pets I liked up from really low levels BEFORE they auto-leveled to five levels below you.

I always forget other people are not like me... x_x

Anonymous said...

A lot of folks seem to like the new wolf model - I detest it. Windpaw is now and will remain a Feralas Snarler model.

As far as race change goes. Going from female Tauren to Nelf was short lived. Nelf to Dwarf has been much more fun. But female Tauren >> all (still)