Slashdot Mirror
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.
you've taken characters that were previously more like sensitive, artsy types and made them look like hulk hogan in drag. bravo.
So a bunch of whiny pansies are bitching about Blizzard giving in to a bunch of whiny pansies? Will that make them change it back?
"Bishy"?
Are we reading the rantings of some crazed slash-fiction writer? This has to be the most mind-numbingly stupid objection to a change that I've ever heard.
Canthros
That's the sound of the WoW playerbase not giving a damn and picking whatever race gives them the best bonuses for their class. While I love Kotaku, this honestly strikes me as one of the whiniest posts I've ever read on there. Boo hoo, Blizzard "nerfed" the character model by making it buffer. While I think its high time Blizzard enable characters to alter more of their physical appearance similar to City of Heroes, I have to wonder...is this really worth posting on the front page of Slashdot?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
That's an interesting euphemism for "customers".
I read Usenet for the articles.
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.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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.
I feel that the female blood elves wear far too much clothing. This expresses an extreme imbalance in the WoW gameplay. It is completely unfair that male night elves may go topless, while female night elves cannot. This imbalance in gameplay must be addressed, or else i will cancel my subscription.
Sincerely,
Whiny Blizzard Customer
Make love, not Warcraft! :P
Hmmm, "Lovecraft" a new MMORPG where you build a custom avatar (male, female, andro, or herma), dress it from our selection of fashionable apparel, and then have to build up your sexual prowess and skill by boinking everyone else and NPCs. I see a new market. Now if we can just keep it from being populated with Cthulu fans I can make a mint.
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.
My mom says I'm cool.
It just goes to show how superheroically drawn the characters are drawn when the "femme" version is more muscular than most men in the real world. I know I wish I had pecs and biceps like that... Couple more before/after pics here.
I REALLY wish wow had better options for customizing the build/appearance of the players. I get so tired of seeing the same old faces and same old bodies. But I guess there's just no money in it.
"Let me tell ya something...brother...the Hulkster doesn't appreciate his likeness being used without permission. Blizzard, I'm calling you out right now. You hear me? You and me, in the ring, Smackdown..."
Wow. I can totally see these new Blood Elves spending all their time in the woods, lifting trees, spotting each other, getting into the shower together after a long workout and having hot, sweaty se--um, yeah.
You gotta feel sorry for the Blood Elf women though; they can look, they can dream, but they know in their hearts that it can never be. To make things worse, they don't have the nice human gentlemen callers to fall back on; that ship sailed more than 4 years ago.
Valve announced today that the wood texture on the AK-47 in Counterstrike will be made slightly darker.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
"Two things: first off, there's no such race. This is a race which will first appear in 2008 when the expansion is released."
Did you know that WoW is based on previous Blizzard RTS games?
Blood Elves in all their glory... introduced in Warcraft III, way back in 2003.
Nobody gives a damn about history anymore, even in made-up worlds.
The real reason behind this probably has little to do with player demands. Wow has always been plagued with horrible clipping and armor fitting problems. Many of the issues are still around from release. Most likely Blizz realized geting the male armor models to fit the extremely skinny blood elves correctly was going to be difficult. Male BE are now almost identical to male Night elves. I actually support the change, however, because Warcraft elves (before and after their change to blood elves) were thinner then normal humans but never the impossibly thin elves of some fantasy worlds. The new elves look a lot more like the elves in warcraft 3 imo.