New hrothgar hairstyles are really bad.

[Alieno]

Even if it is an april fools joke or maybe it isn’t and they’ll just play it off as one?

Pft. I thought about that too but it's highly unlikely, but hey, I'd take it. Just fix things and I'll pretend nothing ever happened.

[SturmChurro]

Oh god, I really wish they would tell us if theres a chance of us logging in without ears then!

Imagine logging in with no ears, but also having to pay for a fantasia for the opportunity. (Which is what I expect)

[KizuyaKatogami]

Pft. I thought about that too but it's highly unlikely, but hey, I'd take it. Just fix things and I'll pretend nothing ever happened.

That’s part of the problem though. People pretending like these issues never existed when they very much did. That’s exactly why these issues start up in the first place lmao.

[vartrashadowbane]

Imagine logging in with no ears, but also having to pay for a fantasia for the opportunity. (Which is what I expect)

please dont do this to me, this sounds like a nightmare :c...

[Haruka_R]

Yall still high on copium? It's been six days.

[Alieno]

No, we're high on getting SE do to the bare minimum.

[Midareyukki]

Yall still high on copium? It's been six days.

The patch will drop, those ears won't be there, those hairstyles still won't fit Hrothgar's appearances, and we'll still have people high on it.

That’s part of the problem though. People pretending like these issues never existed when they very much did. That’s exactly why these issues start up in the first place lmao.

What baffles me is people seeing these things and still thinking that there are no problems. Or that the problems started here. "Here" in general. Because this happens every time someone expresses their discontentment over anything. Some threads are subjective and easily ignorable, but when you see stuff like this, or even outright lies being given off as excuses, and you still see people doing that? "Feels bad" doesn't even describe it.

[FawkesWyznfarr]

Yall still high on copium? It's been six days.

I'm only here because I'm afraid that Yoshida's current attitude of beastial races might be indicative to the quality of female hrothgars. Now I realize that if it wasn't for Ishikawa and Soken FFXIV would be a really mediocre mmo.

[Skyborne]

Oh god, I really wish they would tell us if theres a chance of us logging in without ears then!

Hrothgar players will log in on the morning of the patch to find that they have been replaced by the purple and black checkerboard of missing gmod textures. Viera, too. Please understand. Funnily enough, I was half considering going Hrothgar for a while before this announcement...

[SacraAnima]

So I did a bit of digging through the previous live letters to find any info that was mentioned about Hrothgar hairs and I found quite little. What I did find paints an interesting picture though

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-Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LIII Digest (08/29/2019)
(01:51:49)
Q: I used fantasia to change to Viera and I'm enjoying it. As they're a special race and it may not be possible, but feel like the number of hairstyles available for Viera and Hrothgar is quite limited. Do you have plans to add more in the future?
A: We certainly plan on adding more, so please wait for future patches. However, it will still be race-specific, so there won’t be as many selections when compared to other races.

-Buffed German Interview with Yoshi P. (05/28/2021)
The unique design of Viera and Hrothgar just prevents us from allowing these [hat] pieces, if we want to follow our specifications. Nevertheless, we are aware of player feedback and we are definitely not the kind of dev team that ignores their players feedback. There were a few things we said would be impossible to do, but we worked hard on it and made it possible in the end. We have regular meetings, I was in one just yesterday and we're planning on having another one this upcoming week, where we discuss how to lower development costs or which options we have to add more hairstyles. The players can be assured that we are aware and are thinking about this, but I am asking for a bit more patience and that you wait a little longer. I hope to have some good news soon.

-Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXV (07/09/2021)
As seen today, you saw additional hairstyles on Viera so yes there will be. In the future, in order to ensure we can easily add more hairstyles to both Viera and Hrothgars, we are actually changing the specification on them right now, so it's underway. It will take sometime for that to happen so please be patient.

-Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXVII (11/19/2021)
New hairstyles for Viera will be added in Patch 6.0.
We’d previously announced we’d be unable to add more hairstyles for Viera and Hrothgar as they are designed in a special way compared to other races. However, we saw an extreme number of requests from across the globe, so the development team set out to rework the system and finally made it possible to add more hairstyles after almost two years. "I know it's been a long time, we weren't ignoring it, we've been working on it"
Hrothgar are even more complicated than Viera and will require more time, so their hairstyles will be added in Patch 6.1.

-Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXVIII (03/03/2022)
People are saying “are you really gonna [add Female Hrothgar]?” and uhh, if I say I’m going to do something, I will do it. I mean, I’ve said I’ll do it…
There are also people saying probably not many people will play as female Hrothgar but I think we’ve come this far, and it’s not really the matter of will they be super popular and it’s not like everyone needs to use all races equally. So you know people decide what character should be played for a lot of different reasons, or focus on the inside or outside, and some people may play a lot of certain types of characters or not be allowed to play that type of character and that gives the world a lot of flavor and variety. Especially because we’re aiming to be a game where you can play solo or with friends, so to be honest we’re not overly focused on players needing to play equally as long as everyone is having a good time.

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These were the only bits of information that I could find. So from mid 2019 the attitude was "yeah for sure we'll do more race specific hairstyles" to then going absolutely silent about the topic until nearly two years later to discuss that they would be looking at how to cut costs (ears?) to make new hairs possible. Then in 11/21 they say that they had announced that new hairs weren't coming, but now they are. There may be gaps in my research but I never found mention of them saying it wasn't happening.
The timeline really makes me feel that they didn't actually start working on it until mid-late 2021 and I'm assuming most of that work was on the Viera side of things. The "cutting of development costs" is also really telling. It makes it seem that it's not a matter of if it's possible, but rather a matter of how much time and resources would it cost to make it happen.