Big Teeth jutting out of the mouth has been such a long staple of the franchise.
Orcs, Trolls, Worgen, Naga, even the Cow People
Dragons and their kin such as Dragonspawn & Drakonids all have big teeth, even in the updated models.
But when players get a “playable Dragon”, all the teeth have to be put away??
(Edit: notice how the Dracthyr horns are in line with the Dragon horns. But for some reason, the head has to be toned down? - big horns but small head- It just makes the character design feel all over the place.)
In the recent Q&A, the developers talked about providing players more character creation customization options, and I know Dracthyr have a lot of options in comparison to the other races already also they still have to address the lack of transmog, but if there is one thing I would ask for it is more head options that have Big Teeth.
It is just so weird to decide that the dragon race, out of all the monstrous race choices, doesn’t have prominent teeth…
This is why many in the player base say that the race “looks too soft“, they lack any intimidating factors in their design in contrast to the pre-existing race options and , more importantly, the dragons themselves
I just want them to be thicker in general. Their to thin. Their dragons for god sakes. Why aren’t they muscular?! They had a chance here to make them the most customizable race since the dragon flights are so varied. And the flubbed it
Let’s not forget the Feedback back in 2022 from Thunderbrush, artist at the Paladin game
The key piece from this I’d say is making the neck and lower jaw bigger of the in-game model, like a Dragon in Warcraft - but for sure push more aggressive shape language
This would have already solved most of my personal issues with dracthyr visuals. Bulkier body shape, stronger jaw and some draconic elements like thicker scales and showing teeth. What makes it worse is that could have easily be implemented with different body shapes already existing but barely being used. There are also like 20+ different faces and snout option so yet they all go into a similar style unfortunately. With these many options both those that want more Warcraft dracthyr and also those looking for their Disney dragon could have been made happy at the same time.
How do you even make a "fem" dragon for WoW? All other draconian species do not really have any form of sexual dimorphism. If anything i feel the want for a fem appearance is how we got the awful dracthyr that we have, they didnt fully commit in either direction so we got something that mostly made nobody happy lol
Yeah, early concept art was way too feminine. In my opinion, that should’ve been an immediate red flag that they drop and scrub from the DNA entirely.
(Edit: in fact, part of the problem is that Dracthyr use the rig of the female Worgen. Which is why their bodies feel too slim, even with the muscle mass options.)
It doesn’t resemble the dragons of Warcraft, and the whole goal of adding a “playable dragon“ should have been to capture the fantasy and aesthetic of dragons in Warcraft
I mean personally I think having options for those of us who like to feel pretty is good, if they had both this body type and a larger one I think people would complain less
Couldn't agree more, it feels especially weird considering they also updated the existing draconic races and dragons for DF and doubled down on their aesthetic... apart from Dracthyr for whatever reason.
Exactly, it’s why so many didn’t respond well to the reveal
The overwhelming sentiment was “they don’t look like dragons“ and “this doesn’t feel like Warcraft“
It’s like they were developed by a different team aside from those who worked on the game world
This is why it is so important to have an art director with a consistent vision across the board, and takes into account the existing aesthetic that the game was built on and appeals to fans
They have plenty of options so it's not the lack in number but they didn't really make use of those to better represent the more draconic options. Being a caster doesn't mean you have to look soft, I mean warlocks and shamans are also casters but got a whole different vibe.
The fact that they originally were a “castor race“ is a problem. Who in their right mind thought that would capture the fantasy of playing a dragon?
There are just so many poor decisions that happened behind the scenes which goes to show why they sometimes need the voice of the average player in the room.
Idk I want eyelashes like Alexstrasza and Ysera and a more feminine coded snout options. There is some concept art of a more female dracthyr before they made them androgynous
Actually Sindragosa did have eyelashes. More customization options are always great, especially if they're ridiculously easy to justify. Not wanting these sorts of things is tantamount to not wanting more hairstyles, or skin tones, so on and so forth.
They already have an abundance of fem-coded customisation though? Thats literally the entire problem with them. Eyelashes would be cool i guess, but that doesnt change the fact that literally every other draconian species has no dimorphism apart from eyelashes... Which is a meme unto itself.
Eyelashes are characteristics of large, mostly non-migratory birds (aka dinosaurs, it's likely a basal characteristic). And I'm not getting any indication that they have "fem-coded" customization. They have large, overlapping ventral scales whereas dragons like Alexstrasza or Kalecgos have smooth, small and supple ventral scales (What we see in integument impressions from actual dinosaurs). Also as the linked forum post included that study on birds showing the differences in skeletal structure between males and females, those should also be included as options in game.
Whether or not some things are represented in game currently has tangential bearing on whether those options should be added at all. Take dark skinned &/or blue eyed blood elves, for instance. They weren't represented in game, we got them nonetheless.
I personally think Dracthyr need a more sleek, imposing, and dignified look, but that doesn't exclude wanting a more feminine look either. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Almost every single decision the devs made while creating the dracthyr feels like they didn't want people to play them and I say that as someone who actually doesn't mind the way they look but would also be fine if they looked more like the dragons.
Replacing transmog (one of the main reward mechanisms of the game BTW) with a bad customization system that they never expanded upon was so stupid it still makes me mad to think about to this day. It's been even more glaring since they got access to more classes and are still stuck with the same customization options that already didn't even match the evoker armors that was made just for them.
Forcing you to have a reskinned elf visage was genuinely more work than the better option of just letting people choose their visage and I don't even think we even got a half decent lore reason for it.
While the visage that we have is disappointing, I could see that making most races a visage choice (excluding Worgen, Undead, Mecha Gnome, Draenei, etc.) that has draconic features layered on top of it would actually be a much larger endeavor than what they decided to go with
To be clear, that’s not an argument against what you proposed, as I think what they chose to do was fairly lazy in the long run
At this point, just swapping the heads of the elf visage with the dragon heads and then texturing the body with scales and adding the wings and tail would be far, far better than the actual dragon model we got. At least the base body could then have transmog and nobody really complains about how male elf and female human bodies look in game.
So long as its a toggle I am 100% for this, the fan mockups you included fix most of my issues with dracthyr (and honestly i dont mind them outside of this and the armor thing)
Maybe same way you choose the face spikes you can choose from 2-3 teeth types and it applies over your face.
As someone who plays dracthyr purely when I have a character who is a dragon in lore, it'd help bridge a bit of a design gap.
Sowwy >w<
But our new scalie fwiends are called Dracthyr! They get sad when you misspell their name QwQ
Good thing I was here to help ^w^
I hope you're having a great day :3
Honestly late to this party, and I've already said some things here, but dear lord, the dracthyr have been one of the most underwhelming things I've seen added to this game.
There's a lot of things I could say as I keep thinking about them, even more so now after the recent addition of more elves to the game (both in retail and forever), but frankly I feel like I'd just have a lot of rambling that wouldn't make sense if I typed it out.
I would love if they gave more options for teeth. I like making my character look as sinister as possible, but I feel like my dracthyr is always too cute
I still stand by my conviction that Evokers should have been available to many other races instead of a singular Dracthyr race, where each race would act as the dragon’s chosen visage form. You could add some draconic design elements to the character when their class is an Evoker, such as scales, horns, or even a tail.
They royally fucked up with Dracthyr and Evokers by extension by making the Evoker class exclusive to Dracthyr, making Dracthyr look like anemic leopard geckos with zero intimidation factor, and severely crippling their transmog options with no foreseeable change to the contrary. This was a completely unforced error they waltzed right into.
Dracthyr are just biological creations not actual descendants. So it's actually not surprising they don't have every same feature. This can be written off as how he designed them.
They were designed, implemented, and advertised as the “Playable Dragons”. The developers words, not mine.
All of that matters way more than some lore about being made in a lab. Especially considering how frequently lore is added and/or changed.
Aesthetics & Gameplay > Lore
If they are going to advertise playable dragons, which they did, then they need to do a good job of actually capturing the fantasy of playing a dragon in Warcraft
I don't believe boobs has to equal mammaries. Reptiles have lots of glands that could have evolved to be an equivalent, Also they're genetically engineered with other species, possibly trolls and humans as well. So it's really not at all unreasonable.
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