Amazing that I’m doing any blog posts at all, the long anticipated expansion to World of Warcraft , The Burning Crusade, turned up in my mail this week. The Collector’s Edition no less. It sold out ages ago but then Blizzard, at the last moment, released a number of them through their online store. The lands are beautiful. The expansion created two new races, Blood Elves (a more evil version of the Alliance faction Night Elves) and Draenei (good, nature loving peoples who look half demon, ie goat). The males of the two races couldn’t be further apart, the Draenei are a huge chunky broad shouldered lot while the male Blood Elf would put the models in Zoolander to shame, they have the most hiLARious haircuts ever. It looks as if the artists watched too many 1980s New Romantic video clips and the armour is so very Lord of the Rings (which, if you will remember, featured the guy from Frankie Goes to Hollywood). It’s all quite camp, but I think marvellously so:
Meanwhile, the females of the two new races are practically the same build, small and very narrow of hip and thigh. Probably as a reaction to my own real world petiteness, I do wish a little that they had been made bigger, they don’t really feel very substantial, the Blood Elf especially. The Draenei girl isn’t too bad. It’s a bit strange that they went with a more, for want of a better word, mundane body ideal given the interesting sizes and shapes of the previous female builds. But to be fair, these are races who are primarily magicians and healers respectively, so their slightness makes sense. Blizzard actually made the male Blood Elves bigger due to public complaints that the they were too feminine (which then provoked anti-gay complaints) but I haven’t heard any comment on the females.
If it doesn’t mean a general move to smaller and more normal characters in the future, I guess the new additions do expand the range of shapes available. You have the option of having quite pinched faced and evil looking female Blood Elves and I think if you go down that route, the skinniness emphasises their creepiness while the male Blood Elf characters, even with their weight gain, are certainly a bold departure from all the other super-pumped male races in Warcraft.
Here are some screenshots of my Blood Elf, Rubresca and my Draenei, Nubida
More illustrative is this random Blood Elf, skinny as!:
Compare them with my Night Elves, Carmine or Florette (they’d tower over Rubresca)
or the battle-stance loving hips on my Human Mage, Beliandra
The above are the prettiest of the races, but what I like about Warcraft is the ability to play not just pretty characters (thought that IS fun), but strong ones. Check out my Orc, Banca, and my Tauren, Loranda. These be some damn powerful females!
While I was collecting screenshots, I picked up one of Rubresca overlooking a river with her imp (she’s a Warlock). The foggy autumnal tone of the scenery is so lovely. It really is such a beautiful game to play. (As with the others, you need to click on the thumbnail to see it in full size.)
No Tags
