Male Blood Elves Get Pumped Up

Kotaku reports that the Male Blood Elves, from the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Burning Crusade, have been made more masculine by their Blizzard overseers. Which totally makes sense, because when I think elves I think paragons of masculinity. From the article: "You changed it because your constituency is a bunch of capslock-riding asshats who are threatened by bishy player characters. The reason Blood Elves were Horde in the first place is because everyone was whining about all the Horde races being ugly juggernauts. The point of Blood Elves was to inject some swish into a very physically intimidating set of races. They're not exactly chunky now, and I do not begrudge a game company making prerelease aesthetic changes, but their reasons for doing so are pathetic. " Before and after photos are available in their post.

Comments

One body size does not fit all

[snuf23]

I hate the way WoW only has one body shape per race/gender. All of the males are over muscled. I suppose that's fine for a warrior but why should a mage have biceps like Ahnold? The same goes for rogues, you can't make a slender male thief.

Re:One body size does not fit all

[TheWormThatFlies]

Because "can walk through a door without turning sideways" = "girly man", evidently. Aaah, comicbook aesthetics. :/ The original model wasn't buff enough? Good grief; it looks nothing like an elf -- the only way you can tell what it's supposed to be is that the ears are pointed.

I don't play any MMORPGs, so I don't really have anything to complain about, except the principle of the thing. If I did play, I would like to have a character which is aesthetically pleasing to me. It would be nice if at least one race or class did not have men with huge muscles and women with ginormous cleavage. There are so many character types to choose from -- why do they all have to look the same? Surely there is room to have something for all tastes.

I'd rather have a choice

[LocoMan]

I don't know, but one of the things I'd like to see improved in WoW is the "everyone has the same body type" thing, maybe sliders for how thin/muscular/fat/tall/short you want someone (with limits, of course, so that humans are always taller than dwarves, for example).

I just think it would help set characters apart from everyone else, so you could play (for example) a fat priest like friar tuck on Robin Hood, or a thin tall albino guy like Elric of Melniboné. No idea how hard would it be to implement that, though. I'm still rather new to the game, probably would be problems scaling the armor that are actual models (instead of just different textures) when they're on the characters.

SWG had a nice system

[attemptedgoalie]

I thought that Star Wars Galaxies had the best customization I've seen. WoW is a bunch of the same looking people wandering around wearing similar clothing.

SWG had a much more diverse feel.

Re:If you ask me...

[chrismcdirty]

When I played, it always seemed that the Horde were the adolescents who just wanted to play as a bad guy, all the while deriding the Alliance for choosing characters who look pretty. And that was the attitude from day -14 or so. Personally, I didn't care, as long as the stats were there for the class I chose.