New race

[Enkidoh]

If I remember rightly, viera has been much requested as a new race but Yoshi has turned it down, saying that to add a viera-like race they would have to create a male version as well, which would be too time consuming. As well, he considered the 'humanoid with animal features' slot already filled with the miqo'te and didn't want to just have a ton of animal/human hybrid races in the game. I guess we'll see what Yoshi has planned when the time comes though.

What's the race of the CNJ guide master? Human with horns, I want that.

That's the pad'jal, and I don't think they will ever be playable simply due to their lore - they are literally thralls of the elementals and are hence bound in service to the forest - there simply isn't any way one could 'break free' and become an adventurer (in Gridania's backstory at least one did try, but no matter how he tried, the forest 'kept dragging him back', literally.

As adventurers are free-spirited and come and go as they please, it's anathema to the whole reason the pad'jal exist in the first place (ala, as the emissaries of the elementals in Gridanian society). And besides, pad'jal started out as hyur anyway only to be 'chosen' by the forest and then turned into a pad'jal, so they're less an actual race and more just a mutation in a sense.

[Fensfield]

If I remember rightly, viera has been much requested as a new race but Yoshi has turned it down, saying that to add a viera-like race they would have to create a male version as well, which would be too time consuming. As well, he considered the 'humanoid with animal features' slot already filled with the miqo'te and didn't want to just have a ton of animal/human hybrid races in the game. I guess we'll see what Yoshi has planned when the time comes though.

That's odd, I remember the exact opposite o.o

They chucked a vote out with regard to what a possible new race would be, and an animal featured race for which they literally offered Viera as an example (Yoshida subsequently admitted regretting using the term since it may have skewed the vote) won by a small margin over hybrid races (for which the example was Lalafell/Miqo'te). It's tentatively scheduled for the first expansion (IE: v3.0).

Still, thanks for giving the nice explanation of why Pad'jal are unlikely (although I'd note we have seen one example of a Pad'jal who started as an Elezen). Goodness knows I don't think there's a way they could make Pad'jal a selectable race at character creation without my feeling uncomfortable about it. I'd suggest some unique little quest that allowed a character to potentially become one but.. given Yoshida and co's design philosophies it'd almost certainly be some infuriatingly easy sidestory ending in the player being deemed the ONE AND ONLY FOREIGNER PAD'JAL even as they stand surrounded by a hundred other players doing the same quest and achieving the same thing >.>