[World of Warcraft] I decided to cash in some of my gift cards from Christmas and ordered online two copies of the World of Warcraft expansion, the Burning Crusade. I was surprised to get an email soon after telling me to come on in and pick them up, one for me and one for my wife. I really had expected them to be sold out. There was actually about 100 boxes still on the shelf when I got there.
I got home pretty late last night, so we decided to just upgrade our accounts and install the expansion, perhaps trying to patch before going to bed. 30 minutes later we were done. It was a beautiful thing, couldn’t have gone any better. So we decided to log in and check out the new races. We changed our realm to Doomhammer where my brother (who was already level 64!!) plays and normally encounter a huge queue in the evenings. We got right on, that was unusual.
Everything was going great until we both took a look at the new character models. To be honest, we were quite underwhelmed. It was our opinion that they seemed unfinished. They seemed to lack some of the details present on the first races. It was hard to put our finger on it, but we both agreed, something was off. They looked more cartoonish I guess.
We created Blood Elves, one male and one female. We spent some time laughing at the odd hair styles and default clothing. We logged in and while busy, it was not nearly as crowded as I thought it would be in the newbie area.
The running, jumping and fighting animations all seemed weird to us. The way they stand looks unnatural to us. Perhaps it was just because it was new, but we really were turned off by the whole thing. Looking around, some of the scenery seemed less polished than we had grown to expect from Blizzard. I’m not saying it was crappy, but it certainly seemed below the standards Blizzard had set.
We had decided previously to play Blood Elves but now we are not sure. We spent this morning over breakfast trying to come to terms with exactly what is bothering us. All we know is something about the Blood Elves appearance and movement is too quirky. The female running animation looks really funky. The spin jump is corny. The way the males jump with the knees to the side, who jumps like that? All the time? Weird. It’s almost as if they changed everything they could to make them different than Night Elves, and I mean everything. Perhaps they went too far just trying to be different, I’m not sure.
We did not spend any time looking at the Draenei yet, other than just at the character models. I can say this, I will not play a Draenei male, they look really odd to me. So we are a little bit up in the air now, but we will stick with these Blood Elves for now and see if they grow on us.
– Ethic
The Blood Elves are really underwhelming as a race. The Draenai are a little more interesting, but I agree with you on the lack of detail. in fact, both races are pretty bland detail-wise. The blood elf males have modifiable soul patches?! Seriously, blizzard? Soul patches? The women get modifiable earrings?!
Though the Blood Elf models are rather underwhelming, it kind of grows on you. I have a level 20 and I disliked the look of the character until level 10 or so. Now he doesn’t look so bad…
I also have to say that their starting zone is the best one on the Horde side. Plenty of quests, interesting layout, and an overarching storyline for the newbie zones. I think that Blizzard learned from their mistakes on that part.
The blood elf combat style seems to have an eastern influence, the two handed sword fighting (the stance, the strokes) at least is pretty much modeled on Japanese sword fighting techniques.
The stance of the male blood elf looks amazingly painful. Besides the fact that they just look way too buff (ya, I know, they were buffed up due to complaining, whatever), they stand with their chest out. Besides a stripper with implants, who stands with their chest sticking out at you all the time?
Yes, from now on, this blog will be able to have google hits from “blood elf strippers”. Ethic will be proud of me.
I am really impressed with the Draenei experience to be honest. I like the way I look, and the starting area flat out kicks all the other alliance areas, then stomps on them until they are dead. The running animation looks a lil funky (due to the design of the legs) oh and the male dance is just silly (not even sure wtf it is). Overall the design work in newbie area is just outstanding to me and the quests haven’t bored me yet.
My only problem has to do with the complete idiocy of people who will have a quest to kill X amount of mobs, and instead of teaming up and having 5 people only have to kill say 10 mobs..they want to stay solo and make it so those same 5 have to kill 50 total to get their 10. This is by no means limited ot Draenei or BE areas it is just WAT more annoying because (on my server at least) the Draenei starting area is way overcrowded right now.
I was going to roll a Draenei just for the dance animation. It’s got a lot of that NFL Network “Big Man Dance Contest” flavor.
I felt the same way. I hate the blood elf models, esp the male one, and also felt like the scenery was just not deeply textured enough. It is like WoW is the SW trilogy – everything scarred and worn with multple levels of detail giving you the feeling you’re there, and the Blood Elf lands are like the SW prequel trilogy – all the scenery is CG and nice and neat making it look fake.
I got my mage to 5, and think I might just give up.