Global Chat: Racial edition
Welcome to this week's Global Chat! We love hearing what you have to say at Massively, and we love it even more when we can share the best comments with all of our readers. Massively staffers will be contributing some of their favorite comments every week, so keep an eye out every Sunday for more Global Chat!
A variety of playable races is usually a big selling point for MMOs. If we're going to play in a fantasy world, the ability to step outside of our human skin is icing on the cake. We had quite a bit of discussion of various playable races here at Massively this week, so follow along after the jump to see what everyone had to say!
Of course, if you're going to offer a playable race to your customers, you can't just slap a different skin on the same old thing and call it new -- particularly when it's a race with years of lore and a legion of hardcore fans behind it. Star Trek Online's Klingon race was under the microscope this week when Brandon mentioned in his Captain's Log column that only 18% of the player base has created a Klingon character. Gryphmon shared his thoughts on why that is and what should happen going forward:
The 18% Klingon statistic doesn't surprise me. The Klingon side still only has about 20% of the content that the Federation side has. If the Klingons are an example of what another faction would be like, I don't hold out much hope for anything interesting from a third faction.
I think at this late stage that they should do so something radical. They should give a mea culpa and then just go ahead and integrate Klingons with the Federation. Make a peace treaty and give Klingons full access to Federation quests and TFs. They can still be a separate entity lore-wise, but in practice basically be the same as Federation.
Then they can move forward and start fresh on another faction, hopefully having learned from their mistakes. A PvP-only faction is a terrible idea for such a story based universe. And don't do anything half-assed, even if your user base is telling you to.
Sometimes, playing a different race is fun just because it's silly and lighthearted and not save-the-world serious. Some of the cuter races, like Earth Eternal's Zumi, are perfect for that sort of thing. Beau discussed that aspect in Free-For-All, and Carolina pitched in with her take on it:
I like when the "furry" character options are super cute, like the Zumi. It's a good break from the serious looking humans and elves from the games I generally play. It does seem that they are more present in f2p titles (remembering that EQ2 has a f2p server and client). Trying to recall here quickly, I guess only WoW has the Worgen and then FF has those people with cute cat ears and tail, and then the original EQ races.
Finally, brand-new races that aren't available yet but will be playable in the future can hold even more interest, because they're open for plenty of speculation. The Guild Wars 2 developers pulled their upcoming game's Sylvari race behind closed doors last year for a complete redesign. The race will be unveiled beginning tomorrow, and our readers have plenty to say about what came before. Massively reader Irem has high hopes for the improvements to come -- particularly when they're compared to what came before:
I like the look of that concept art, but yeah, the first time I saw it I only saw Blood Elves. It does sound like they'll have a bit more plant to them, and I wouldn't mind seeing something closer to the body type in that concept art with enough unique features to make it clear that they're not just traditional Elves with some flowers in their hair.
They did look too young, too, IMO--but that could just be my teeth on edge from the popular misconception that they're all supposed to be running around touching things inappropriately, shouting "WHAT'S THAT?!" and needing babysitters.
As always, you're up next. Hit the comment button and let us know what you think!
