The new World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansions is set to allow players to select characters with ethnic differences and a darker skin tone. Has this been in the works for 15 years?
This new customized feature took everyone as a surprise. The reason is that the question remains why it took them so long to include ethnic diversity, knowing they are one the world’s longest-running MMO (massively multiplayer online game) with a vase variety of fans across the globe. One could say World of Warcraft has a range of collections, and the answer would be a yes; at the same time, another could say, yes, there are many races but not enough diversity in terms of ethnic diversity.
Because think about it, didn’t all the humans have a somewhat tan-ish skin? Well, it’s certainly changing in this new expansion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNf7JT1Jowg
According to a question asked by Robert Purchese senior staff writer at Eurogamer, to Blizzard duo Micheal Bybee, senior producer, and Patrick Magruder about the recent development and here’s what they told him:
‘One of the things that’s just a reality of making video games is we have to identify where our resources are spent’ Micheal muttered to Robert, he added: ‘so we have time to spend on characters and art before we make certain decisions.’
Then he continued saying: ‘What’s happened earlier is we did HD resolution to our player models a few expansions ago, thinking it would make absolute sense. Also, with a tremendous amount of resource, well, we didn’t want to slap a new skin color on there and say: Yep, that’s one good diversity.’
After all said and done, he explained further: ‘What we are doing now is remodeling the faces of these characters to match an actual ethnic background with little to no defects, which takes a load of time—but then again, we wanted it done right. So, that was our highest price: we wanted to make sure it looked perfect in our game.’
‘That’s true,’ Patrick Magruder added: ‘We’re re-compositing the faces, so they show the ethnicities. Not just for humans, but all races. We’re also adding customization features in this expansion. You’d blown away by the art—it’s amazing!’
World of Warcraft, as the name suggests, would take us the Shadowlands, the world of the unloving— the place we’ve been hunting in for years. Now, what to expect? Well, a whole world full of opportunities.
Moreover, the other feature to be excited about is the level ‘squash.’ This means Blizzard is leveling the count from 120 to 60, for all players in the game. Awesome! There’s still also a lot to expect, till we meet again, Happy Gaming!
