racial-traits
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Readers' ideas for cosmetic racials
Last night, we posted reddit user Clatterbot's ideas for fun, cosmetic racial abilities in Warlords of Draenor. Some of you had ideas of your own to contribute, my personal favorites coming from reader SiccoThermaplugg: Buns of Steel: Dwarves can be used as Anvils. Tauren: Hoof'n It! 2% run speed bonus. Haunting: Undead have a 20% of appearing right above their corpse when they release Spirit. Sons/Daughters of Steel: Lets gnomes transform in to Mechagnomes. Follow along as we explore other ideas. Disclaimer, by the way: we don't claim all (or any) of these ideas are balanced. They're just for fun!
Bringing fun to racials in World of Warcraft
Racial traits don't need to be strictly business. Earlier this week, reddit user Clatterbot proposed his own ideas for racial abilities focused on fun and flavor rather than stats and combat. More Pack Hobgoblin, less Endurance. Clatterbot's ideas include: Dwarf - Keg of Thunderbrew Lager: 3 minute cooldown. Sets up a keg of ale. Raid members can click the keg to acquire refreshments that regenerate 5% of total health and mana ever second for 20 seconds. Cannot be used in combat. Forsaken - Death to the Scourge (And the Living): Increases experience earned from killing undead and humanoids by 20%. Human - Summon Peasant: Requires Herbalism or Mining. 5 minute cooldown. Command your peasant to harvest materials from a node nearby within 40 yards. It would be unfair to say the developers don't ever make racials like these. That's not true at all. The aforementioned Pack Hobgoblin is one example. Another example is one of the troll racials being updated in Warlords of Draenor, which gives 20% additional experience when killing beasts, much like Clatterbot's proposed racial for the Forsaken. Still, when it comes to racials, I'm the sort of person that puts fun and flavor on a pedestal above stats. An added 1% haste or 1% crit doesn't interest me very much, but having an ability unique to my race is far more engaging, even when it has no combat purpose. Others in the /r/wow thread are kicking around ideas for racials in this vein. I'm curious: what sort of racial would you propose for your characters?
Ten levels of RIFT: A guide to your first day in Telara
With two RIFT beta events under my belt, I was given the supreme honor of creating a guide to the first 10 levels of the game. Naturally, I fell apart under the stress, assumed the fetal position for a couple days while whimpering about "frame rates," and then was prodded into action by our editors. That's quite literally "prodded," mind you -- Massively purchased a pair of cattle prods last year at a police auction. It's going to be years until the scorch marks fade from my spine. The purpose of this guide is two-fold. First, we want to give anyone who's interested in RIFT but couldn't get into the beta a chance to vicariously experience RIFT's newbie path. Second, while RIFT is careful to hold your hand during your first steps into Telara, there are always a lot of things that can be easily missed while one is partaking in the wonders of a new virtual world. So this guide is here to share a few tips and pointers that beta testers may have missed. What are you waiting for? Roll up a new character by hitting the jump!
Spiritual Guidance: New priest races and racial traits in 4.0.3 and Cataclysm
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests. She enjoys grating carrots. So 4.0.3 is out now, and all the little Holycows are running about Mulgore, grazing on the succulent young grasses. Pocketheals the gnome priest is strafing across Dun Morogh, avoiding those who would punt her. If you haven't heard, 4.0.3 has made it so that tauren and gnomes can become priests now. In another week, we'll also be able to play worgen and goblin priests too! That means every race in the game but orcs (poor orcs) can now be a priest. That makes it a good time to talk about racial traits for priests then, doesn't it? So if you want some extra insight on making that new priest you've always wanted, hit the jump. And if you don't want a priest, maybe you should reconsider that, huh?
The Road to Mordor: Off to the races
A long time ago in this column, back in an age of sweet innocence that I like to call "April 2010," I spent a bit of time commenting on the nine classes in Lord of the Rings Online and how they appeal to different playstyles. Today, as I sit here swaddled in a blanket, drinking tea and desperately trying to wish this cold away, I want to write the companion piece to that article, dealing with races. LotRO is somewhat unique in the MMO landscape in that it is pretty confined to four and only four playable races outside of PvMP. As much as we love the Pale Folk, I highly doubt we'll ever be given another racial choice for the lifespan of the game -- at least, not without some fiddly logic on Turbine's part. Besides, the four races we're given -- Dwarf, Man, Hobbit and Elf -- are the iconic grouping of the books, and trying to add a gnome or giant or well-intentioned half-orc to the Quest would just come off as silly. Anyway, if you're starting out in LotRO or mulling over an alt, there's a lot more to consider when picking a race than just "what looks good" (although I'm not going to tell you looks aren't important, no I am not). Races influence your starter zone, traits, special skills and class picks. Join us as we jump down the rabbit hole and emerge in a magical land full of words and screenshots!
The Queue: Six
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Ah, Rambo. He has a striking resemblance to certain staff members here at WoW Insider. But in the good way, sort of like the good way where I answer six of your questions today - with perhaps the best question saved for last.Ghaundaur asked..."If you dual spec at 40 and in the process find out that you made a mistake on either one of your specs and need to fix it, is the cost 1000g again or the normal progression in cost to change a spec? Also, say you are leveling a pally and dual spec Ret and Prot and then get to 80 and want to do Prot and Holy. Are we looking at another 1000g?"
The Gaming Iconoclast: Whither Shortcomings?
Many MMO aficionados cut their roleplaying teeth on one of the many pencil-and-paper titles that formed the early generation of multi-player gaming. In addition to rolling (and rolling, and rolling, and rolling) some dice to come up with their basic stats and traits, character generation involved a lot of "wet work" when it came time to acquire skills. Often, players would bargain with their Game Master to get special dispensation for pushing the envelope.Player: I want to run this adventure as a zombie elf with three arms.GM: Okay, but if you do that, none of the other characters will trust you. Also, you will spend 50% more on shirts and body armor. Still want to do it?Thus, the mechanic of trading character flaws for enhanced abilities was born. One of the hallmarks of tabletop gaming is this trade-off -- saddling yourself or your character with a shortcoming in order to obtain an advantage elsewhere, either as a skill, or a talent, or just another way to go about Min/Maxing. The huge number of available options in some games (Vampire: The Masquerade, for instance) ensures that any player, with only a few minutes' consideration, will have an almost absolutely unique character, fully their own creation.And yet, almost without exception, the online iterations we all enjoy seem to have omitted this altogether. We are an immense legion of perfectly-formed, mentally-stable, socially-adept übermensch. Even the so-called "ugly" races -- World of Warcraft's Forsaken or Tabula Rasa'sHybrids -- don't explore the depth and breadth of this concept too deeply. Racial traits and differentiation are the merest tip of this particular iceberg.Why does this rich milieu, this fecund ground of roleplay fodder and character diversity, languish? (And who left this thesaurus on my desk?)
Skinning Tauren for leather
We've definitely had this conversation before, but Bhou on the EU forums brings it up yet again: why don't we treat the various races like they, y'know, are those various races? He asks why we can't skin Taurens for leather, but that brings up all the other race issues in Azeroth. Why aren't Undead immune to fear? Why aren't Gnomes tameable? Oh wait, that last one might not be right (though it would be funny).But besides the game balance problems, the fact is that the racial abilities are about as well-represented as they're going to get (and in fact, if there are any changes in the future, they'll probably be towards conformity rather than radically away from it). You can't skin Tauren because, guess what, they're humanoids. Undead can't be immune because guess what, they're humanoids, too, and while a weakness to holy spells might make the game interesting, it won't help towards balance.The Warcraft world is a mean one, but would the Alliance really go so far as to skin fallen Taurens on the battlefield anyway? For game balance or for lore reasons, it just doesn't make sense.
WoW Moviewatch: Roll a Horde - Elf Hunters
The Warcraft Movies site has always been a great source of WoW-based machinima. Recently, they held a video creation contest called the Fabled Few to find the best of the best among today's visual storytellers. The finalist were selected and the voting closed on Tuesday.The vid above is the runner up in the Comedy category. Inspired by the "Get A Mac" commercials, a Blood Elf and Night Elf argue superiority based on racial abilities. After you watch the film, I think we all can agree that we've grouped with someone like the Belf Hunter depicted. And immediately found a reason to /disband.Previously on Moviewatch...
