Breakfast Topic: Should Blizzard allow race changes?
by Robin Torres 
Apr 23rd 2008 at 8:00AM
Blizzard poster Slorkuz said there would not be a race change implemented and locked the thread.
I can see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, it would be difficult to come up with an in-world, non-lore-breaking way to implement this change. Going to a barbershop to change your hair makes sense. Converting from Human to Gnome, does not.
On the other hand, the racial abilities changed without any thought to lore. So if Blizzard wants to make changes to balance the game, why not let players change their race if they don't like Blizzard's changes?
Personally, I don't think they should, but if they do, it should be one time only with a fee attached. But I like re-rolling. Alts are fun!
We've asked before if you would, but I'm asking today if you think you should be able to change your race rather than being forced to re-roll? And if so, how do you think it should be implemented? Do you think re-rolling is too much of a pain or part of the fun of the game?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Analysis / Opinion, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
bumble Apr 23rd 2008 8:07AM
I want to change my male gnome warlock into a female tauren druid and transfer him from a european pve realm to a american pvp realm. make it so!
jrb Apr 23rd 2008 8:30AM
i think we should just stick to turpy's idea of world of dudecraft. we're all exactly the same race, class, no character customisation, or talents.
that would make an excellent game.
seriously, how about you actually sit and think for a second or two when you're rolling your character, then maybe you wont whine like a biatch about wanting to change 2 hours in to the game. i mean, that IS why blizzard give us that big manual, and excellent community site stocked with game information, and in game descriptions of races and classes. they even n00bed up lvling from 20-60, i mean, what else do you want? the moon on a stick?
wyrd Apr 23rd 2008 3:23PM
@jrb
You are missing the point. Many of the racials arent the same as when we picked them originally. We picked them for a reason, and then blizz decided to change them. Im not one of those asking for a way to change, but I certainly understand the frustration of having something liked that changed after you made a decision and cant change it.
jrb Apr 23rd 2008 4:00PM
@wyrd
yeah, i got that point. I've been playing on and off since open beta, but i'm not sure what these changes are. http://www.wowwiki.com/Racial_Traits lists 2.3 changes, but i can't see any changes listed here that would warrant me to really want to change the race of my character that i've levelled since its inception. Maybe it's a priest thing racial trait, but the gnome picture hardly suggests that.
Robin Torres Apr 23rd 2008 5:58PM
The gnome picture is just my character with the goggles from Brewfest on looking at a famous human, thereby giving him a race change. The forum link goes to a Dwarf Priest talking about racials, however.
Buuty Apr 23rd 2008 8:15AM
Such nonsense. Stop entertaining the stupidest of ideas, like changinf races, cross faction reputation, etc. A better discussion would be: What happened to the "War" in World of Warcraft?
Matthew Rossi Apr 23rd 2008 8:45AM
First off, from my perspective that "What happened to the War in Warcraft" seems as silly and unimportant as race changes seem to you.
Secondly, my main is a human warrior I've been playing since release. I didn't have the option to roll draenei when I made him, and since then, as you might expect he's got better gear than the draenei warrior I've since rolled. It's not realistic to expect my guild to just let me start bringing a dude in greens and quest blues to Hyjal and BT.
Algorithm Apr 23rd 2008 9:33AM
For you, it's race. For many, it's faction. For others, it's class. My main is an Alliance mage, and there was a time, where I had extreme grass-is-greener syndrome with Horde warlocks. I picked a class that changed a lot from vanilla WoW to the Burning Crusade, and, honestly, how could I have known in December 2004 that Horde would become the de facto faction for PvPers?
I thought of what it would take to make my new main an Orc Warlock, and it just wasn’t a reasonable thing to accomplish.
On the one hand, leveling is really easy and fun. When a character is your main, gearing up isn’t that difficult. Content that was a time sink the first time through is trivial with well geared team mates. All the patches have made gearing up and leveling easier.
On the *other* hand, I’m exalted with the Argent Dawn. It would make me feel empty inside to go to my reputation tab and see that I was neutral with them. It would also be boring and tedious to try and change that. I made it to Rank 10 pre-BC. I have every non-MC engineering schematic. Do I really want to go through THAT part of the game again? Not really. What are the chances I can turn in Nefarion’s head again? Pretty close to 0. My main is more than a level and gear to me.
By the way, it is people, like me, the ones that see an absolutely insurmountable barrier to switching characters that are the whiniest. Anything that makes our current character choice problematic creates a lot of cognitive dissonance.
There are four things that define a character at the log in page: your looks, your race, your class, and your name. Changing your name is just a vanity choice from Blizzard’s perspective. But, changing your face, your race or your class completely takes away the “character” element from your “character”. It would start being a slot on your login page with transient properties. I sympathize with you, but I don’t think this should be allowed.
Getting exalted with a faction isn’t like unlocking a Smash Brother’s character.
Algorithm Apr 23rd 2008 9:37AM
"A better discussion would be: What happened to the "War" in World of Warcraft?"
That's a terrible question. Since when have you stopped using your combat abilities? What class are you now? Diplomat?
Vestras Apr 23rd 2008 8:21AM
I've regretted a few race/sex choices on some of my alts. I once rerolled a dranei hunter from male to female, same name and transfered what gear I could. Others seemed like great ideas at low levels, but at higher levels, the gear just doesn't look as good on some races.
Lore wise, it's easy to do: Transporter maulfunction that sticks. We see it all the time with gnomish engineers, and they use that same explanation for server transfers, so why not race/gender changes?
Sirg Apr 23rd 2008 8:24AM
This is a dumb topic - because if people would change their char's race, they might find that don't like the change very much, and would like to change back, so you'll see players that are humans for one week then back to nelf, or something even more silly like gnome druid, or undead druid :)
Agreed with Buuty - what happened to the WAR in WoW? Where is the feeling of incomming battle, tensions, battlefield glory, or common efforts like Battle of Hyjal?
Sirg Apr 23rd 2008 8:27AM
and a second thought - it's fun to have different races alts - you can see each race from a different perspective. Having one to 3 alts is quite normal and doesn't require alot of time investment like raiding does.
John Apr 23rd 2008 8:27AM
I don't see the big deal really. I dont want to change the race of any of my toons, but wouldnt care fi someone else did. But why does there need to be a lore reason for anything? It's just a videogame, a videogame that most of us aren't roleplaying in, so don't allow it on the RP servers I guess. You accept that everyone can go to a dungeon over and over and kill the boss over and over, and there's no logical lore reason for that, but you can't accept race changes? Other games, over the course of time have allowed race changes, D&D (of the old-school variety) had various curses that might have unpleasant effects on your character's race, cursed items that would change your sex, a druid's reincarnation (a ressurection-like spell) could force you to come back as an animal (or a monster, or just a different player race). So, just throw in some "cursed" items that folks could use to change their race, there, problem solved, RP-ers can say it's a curse, the rest of us can roll our eyes and move on.
Eresin Apr 23rd 2008 8:47AM
I don't think you should be allowed to change your race, haricuts yeh, but race no.
I think it adds extra scope to the game where you have to adapt to new abilities and the loss of old ones. Think about it, in RL you get old and maybe lose the use of your hearing or something, you have to adapt. Should be the same kind of idea here. You rolled that particular race, got it to 70, now something has changed...see it as a new challange, not something that's bad.
Matthew Rossi Apr 23rd 2008 9:02AM
I'm not at all concerned with my racial abilities. I simply have come to loathe the human emotes and appearance.
I'll use WotLK as my 'unofficial' race change. The Draenei will get to 80 first and I'll tank on him, the human will be retired to serve as my PvP toon/enchanter. But if I could just switch the human's race to draenei now, I wouldn't have to abandon a character I rolled three years ago before there was the option to play draenei.
Combatc87 Apr 23rd 2008 8:49AM
I think it would be a nice addition if it were part of a paid name or server change. Maybe even penalize the player by not transferring racial abilities, make it purely cosmetic.
Personally I would only consider a change with my female BElf paladin. Like someone said, there's a reason for the manual and you should sit and think for a second before creating your toon. To that I say: animations. After spending time at 70 and playing as Prot, I've grown to like the animations of Male BElfs much more than the female ones. They're much more involved animations.
chillis Apr 23rd 2008 8:49AM
if racials are the only concern it sounds like a job for the new profession, inscription.
Zhalseran Apr 23rd 2008 8:50AM
I would like the ability to change the race of a couple of my characters, I don't see it even happening though.
Corey Apr 23rd 2008 9:07AM
I always thought it would be nice if, when you reach exalted with another race in your faction, you could switch out one of your racial abilities with a racial bonus of that race. And if there turned out to be balance issues with that, say getting all the very best abilities, make the abilities in slots. You could only change a slot 1 racial of your own race with a slot 1 racial of another race. This way, you'd have the customization you wanted with racials (after you earned it) but you couldn't make your character too overpowered.
kuri Apr 23rd 2008 9:30AM
Wow, a pretty solid idea.