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The races in a High Fantasy IP, can't do much different than High Elfs, Orcs, Trolls, the usual!
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
I know people here are tired of the high fantasy races in the IPs here in this genre.
but sticking with the High Fantasy theme, it's no possible way to escape the traditional high Elfs, Orcs, trolls, dwarfs, humans, etcs that are found in DnD.
they may look different, and even be called something new, but at the end of the day, it's still one of those traditional DnD races .
I been looking for some ideas on some original high fantasy races. But they all seem to be ether an DnD race with added features, or a Humanoid Animal. Anybody have any ideas?
but sticking with the High Fantasy theme, it's no possible way to escape the traditional high Elfs, Orcs, trolls, dwarfs, humans, etcs that are found in DnD.
they may look different, and even be called something new, but at the end of the day, it's still one of those traditional DnD races .
I been looking for some ideas on some original high fantasy races. But they all seem to be ether an DnD race with added features, or a Humanoid Animal. Anybody have any ideas?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
I prefer the fantasy genre. I'm just not a fan of sci-fi, modern, or post-apocalyptic MMOs.
But yeah, the elf thing is getting pretty old.
Star Trek Online, although being a terrible game, had a fantastic Character Creation. They provided an option to create your own alien race. This was fantastic. You had limitless options in size, color, pattern, head / body structure, etc. People made some pretty interesting entities.
Using the above ability, I think it would be cool for a game to avoid the "race thing" and just let players create their own. It would be like a gigantic Mos Eisley Cantina, where everyone differed.
So wait are you looking for High Fantasy races that are not often featured in games or non High Fantasy races that could be used in the setting?
Either way there are more possibilities than can be posted here.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
Personally i'd like to see more non-humanoid races available to play. Sure you can come up with something like space goats/worgens, but all you are really doing is throwing a different color on them and giving them different racial traits.
Something like Istarias dragons are a good example of what i'd like to see in the future, which play out and advance differently from the humanoid races.
everquest 2 apparently can:
Barbarian
Erudite
Freeblood
Gnome
Half Elf
Human
Kerra
Ratonga
Dwarf
Fae
Froglok
Halfling
High Elf
Wood Elf
Arasai
Dark Elf
Iksar
Ogre
Sarnak
Troll
i prefer high elves, orcs and dwarfs to blue humanoid aliens thats fore sure.
How about Satyrs, Minotaurs, Centaurs and other "hybrid" races?
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
pick up a copy of neverwinter2
have fun with all the choices, they should give you some ideas...
not enough?
go read a copy of the actual D+D player manuals and accessory books from version 1 to today, should be 100s of races to choose from in there, as long as your DM agreed to use them.
There are tons of races available in the original fantasy game that the entire fantasy MMO genre is based on, problem is no developer wants to be that DM....or pay the rights to use the ideas, which they should have done from day 1.
Well, PW is taking on Neverwinter this year, so we shall see.
Oh before anyone says it...Eberon is not D+D, never was, never will be, even with their new expansion.
D+D = Forgotten Realms and everything attached to it (including Neverwinter, PlaneScape, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Krynn, etc)
Eberon was a contest winner, and a foolish decision.
Most high fantasy races are humanoid, theres no escaping that. However you listed 5 races, when Dungeons and Dragons had well over a hundred races. Most being human / animal hybrids of some sort though, or variations of the core races.
Draconians are probably the furthest removed from humanoids you are going to get. The Loxo are also fairly different, being some sort of weird two-trunked elephant people.
Everquest did really well with its racial choices, probably the best in the genre. Frogloks and Ratonga!
In general people tend to gravitate towards somthing familiar, that has some sort of reflection of themself involved. This goes for anything in life but really stands out in the selecting of a race in video games. People are more likely to spend alot of time with somthing that reminds them of them selves and can relate to their in game "life."
Not to mention you cant just copy paste / resize armor if all the races are crazy different shapes, it would take devs 10x as long and 10x as much $ to release new armors.
C
What about Humanoid plants?
You really don't put any forethought into your posts do you?
You don't even think anymore before posting do you Exposed?
ITS FANTASY. ANYTHING GOES.
You create a whole new IP to get away from those elfs orcs trolls etc.
Banana people, a mix between a person and a scooter(wheels for feet), Creatures with their heads in their stomache peeking out at you, there is literally no end yto the possibilities.
It's only limited by your imagination. Sadly, most businesses are lacking imagination, so they rehash these 'standard' character models. That doesn't mean that's all there can be EVER.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
This is the most common excuse I hear, and it's a valid one. If you want a game with races that aren't simply humans with costume pieces glued on, then you'll need a game that isn't all about acquiring gear.
I don't mind the generic, usual fantasy races... in fact most of them should be in every game, but complement them with other races too. Centaurs are unfortunately largely ignored, but I think that's due to their four-leggedness. If you're going to put a centaur into a game with WADS controls, I want to feel like I'm controlling a centaur and not an avatar represented by one. See any game that lets you ride a horse, like Assassin's Creed for instance.
I really like the Spriggans from Skyrim... they're essentially druids but I like the look. If something like that had a more humanoid form and can shift to a normal looking Spriggan for some extra damage or something, that would be cool.
I think the Native American motif is sorely missing too. The Tauren were cool in WoW but I wish they were a little more human-like, maybe a little more feral than the average human. Tauren who were shaman/druids in WoW just added to that motif with the shapeshifting to animals, that could be a race feature rather than a class feature.
Aquatic races are usually omitted from play... for obvious reasons. Water's not a significant factor in most games(if at all). I really liked Gobi in Breath of Fire.
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If you spend a year fleshing out the lore of exotic new evolutionary trees, the first questions you will face from players will be either "why aren't there elves?" or "why are there space goats?"
When I first read Lord of the Rings, I envisioned Tolkien's elves as having a native American motif. All the talk of "across the sea" and tall, proud warriors with mystism intertwined with nature ... it all seemed to fit a mythification of the new world.
EQ2 did a FANTASTIC job with their large variety of classes and races. It's a shame that such a variety is not considered the norm.
In addition to that, rigging and animating the character models is more in depth. If you have 4 legged pcs, do they run faster than than bipeds?
There is a lot to consider. You already have to make male and female versions of clothing and gear.
Flying creatures? perfect balance of every player seems to be the common goal in mmos these days. It's a shame, really.
Don't we have a wonderful supply of races from the enemies we've created?
WoW - Dreadlords, nagas, demons and those awesome stumpy walrus dudes in northrend.
Guild Wars - Titans/Destroyer
My mind has gone blank at 4am so you guys will have to help me out here.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
True that. How your character controls is very important. You're going to spend a lot of time on the move, after all, and when that movement isn't in a straight line on flat ground, you're going to want it to look and feel natural. With anything other than a basic biped, that gets much more difficult. This is one of the reasons why I never complained about games where you can't jump or swim. Even for normal humanoids, it doesn't look right. Either you remove the freedom of movement and allow people to only jump one foot or so (thus making the jump purely for show), or you allow people to jump to a useful height even from a standstill and settle for a ridiculous animation.
Individuality is also important. Humans and humanoids are easy to tell apart because we spend literally our whole lives looking at human faces. If you make a race of faceless plant creatures, players will feel less attached to their characters because they will have a harder time distinguishing them from others of the same race.