Gender locked race?

[redcurrant18]

10 pages till we hit 200 wow

[Gwenorai]

A very big thread indeed, perhaps there would be some notice taken. A little taste to come for the future I suppose if they do end up genderlocked. Or perhaps Yoshida and co are just smiling going; 'Hahahaa, look at them all worry and argue - what we got planned is going to blow their minds!' And high-fiving themselves.

Or you know, the opposite :sweating emote goes here:

[Theodric]

To be fair, this isn't a case of hundreds of people flocking to the forum to express their outrage. It's a case of a handful of posters keeping it alive through discussion - and the occasional third party noticing the thread and posting their commentary in passing.

[Shougun]

It could be orchestrated, but I dont find that likely from the practical marketing sense. I apologize for bringing that point up constantly but its important because businesses will make decisions for money purposes, broadly. This means how some of ShB and any content related to it (races, classes, etc) will be affected by business acumen. Just to recap, there are business strategies that suffer in promoting your product by not hinting at a second race in any capacity. Generating hype around a potential second new race (even if its gender locked) is a net win for them no matter how you cut it. Doing the reverse, the way I see it, hurts them. So it doesnt seem like a practical move on their part. Even with the AuRa, there were hints and etc regarding them before the full reveal. There was something notable in game. We really havent seen that for Hrothgar. And as a point, we would not even be discussing Hrothgar to any serious extent if it wasnt for the french leak. That kicked it off more than any actual thing. We could assume Devs did that purposefully, but that is a super clunky way to let players in on things. It is literally purposefully bugging out your product (read as breaking it) just to let people subtly know theres a new race? They couldve put out an ambiguous tweet about Hrothgar and that wouldve been more legit. A simple mention of them in the MSQ as an off hand comment wouldve made better bang. It just doesnt seem likely.

One of the things I like to do even though I don't play it so much is watch Warframe dev streams, because they're so playful and casual and they leak their own stuff on accident (?) sometimes lol. Just mean to say appearing too corporate and business like even if it looks good on paper might not be as good as being playing with your fans (like RDM/SAM was before in streams and in game).

Watching Yoshi-P and Koji banter and discuss new features and maybe "slip up" with info or pictures > polished trailer with a few fancy text headlines "NEW RACE" perfectly placed in a release window order (not that I'm saying it's one or the other, both, both is good hehe). Playing with fire is exciting imo, watching something cold and calculated.. less so.

Also I would ask what about Bethesda's release of Fallout 4? That was what like 4 or 5 months before the ENTIRE game was out lol. SE could be using this new race as fire to rekindle all the other info once they're ready. So they do as you say and release stuff over time to get people in on a slow hype train and then OH BTW ISHGARD HOUSING PICTURES, FARMING, AND UH ANOTHER RACE, AND MALE VIERA, CHOO CHOO GET ON THE TRAIN - RELEASES IN TWO MONTHS LOL.

I, personally, like that the leak exists because it's been food for us to nibble on between droughts of info - and because it's vague AND not "official" we can both play around with ideas and also not require SE beholden to them. I feel that's rather smart, for a dev perspective. Keeps the train alive, at least for some people - who then help keep that train alive else where. Not a very repeatable mistake unless they keep that specific account alive though, because you'll get copycats. Once they officially release info then the train just gets stronger, assuming the news is good lol ("we decided to make Warrior a limited job" . . . nice).

So I can understand about trying to concoct the perfect storm of hype but I feel there isn't anything wrong with injecting hype at a lower level first before coming towards official pieces of release. Say if we're all unsure about Viera Male and they release them, everyone in this thread being concerned just got off a roller coaster more than if they released them together. With Ronso like race rather than people just being 100% blindsided they're now hopeful but unsure, like as if they were gambling lol, and then OH BTW LION-LIKE RACE.

Eh dunno I guess while I can see the train of thought that leads to a perfectly laid out calendar on your table for release.. I think a little chaos could actually help. Assuming the info you plan on releasing is good. That said I'm not encouraging people to break NDAs or anything, I'm speaking strictly intentional info stream (I'm not arguing for more leaks that just cause the team to be stressed/disappointed). Please follow your NDAs lol.

As for the Trailer, I dismissed most of it when it was showing the Amdapori Weapons. Pre-existing lore (if I read it right) points to the lion, Kuribu, and etc as being weapons specifically designed to fight against Machi black magic in the war of the magi. You could say that theyre weapons of light or white magic - and to defeat them youd have to go using dark magic. Dark Magic, Dark Knight, connect connection? Thats how I interpreted it.

Could it be a reference or a tie in to something? Sure. But do I believe it to be? No. It seems more likely to tie into the themes and story of the xpac rather than referencing a race. It's a little to opaque, even for Yoshi P and SE.

But maybe there is something to it. Could simply be we will get two new races in the game. The first race will be given to us at launch (Viera, both M and F) and for story purposes, Hrothgar will be introduced to us at a later time in the xpac. Maybe that race is locked behind an MSQ wall - you cant phantasia into a Hrothgar unless you completed a certain part of the MSQ. Wont make 100% perfect sense from a lore/story telling point, but it will push people to go further into the expansion if they want to play the new race.

Fair enough, I mean there could also be legit lion references for other reasons and there could be a lion race AND those two items have nothing to do with each other lol. Or it's nothing at all! When I set out to look into the trailer I was specifically hunting for lion info :P. But if we just try to say shadowbringer trailer, what's being shown - we've got a new job, new areas, returning character, character job changes, some fire event, and a boat load of lion references that have to do with overcoming the light.

I think the light vs dark bit is strong too, but also consider that Lamasu and Cherub reference zodiac which could tie back into Zodiark/Ascian. On top of that people wonder how in the world did white mage get so strong (like our white magic is a joke to the old day tier stuff lol)? Zodiark vs Hydaelyn could have been what those two cities were all about, or some Ascian black vs white? On top of that where the statue was not designed after themselves but some otherworldly thing - so Kuribu isn't just some random statue guardian (maybe lol, could also just be a nod to angels XD).

Also I may be wrong but the trailer has one more bit to be added right, or is it complete now? But I do agree the lions in the trailer could just be a circumstance of the area.

To be fair, this isn't a case of hundreds of people flocking to the forum to express their outrage. It's a case of a handful of posters keeping it alive through discussion - and the occasional third party noticing the thread and posting their commentary in passing.

Well if you would just stop yelling at me this thread could die. . . STOP I SAID.. <3

We should celibate at 200 pages lol. I'll bring some Realm Reborn :3

[Crushnight]

To be fair, this isn't a case of hundreds of people flocking to the forum to express their outrage. It's a case of a handful of posters keeping it alive through discussion - and the occasional third party noticing the thread and posting their commentary in passing.

Tbf the fact it still got this big so quickly is a feat in of itself

[Roda]

I mean there's at least 247 unique posters in this thread, with an average of ~7 posts per person.
(though to be fair, there are 3 people with 100 or close to 100 posts in this one thread, and a few more with half that count, and yes just a little under half the participants do have 1 post, the other half seems to have engaged in some kind of discussion since their visit. Though, which side has more unique posters in favor of it I do not know. I'm too lazy for that.)
So I wouldn't say they're flocking, but there are technically "hundreds" of people who have participated in this thread.
But yeah... continuous bumping by an active few is typically how most discussion threads stay alive..

[Wolfyboy]

I mean there's at least 247 unique posters in this thread, with an average of ~7 posts per person.
(though to be fair, there are 3 people with 100 or close to 100 posts in this one thread, and a few more with half that count, and yes just a little under half the participants do have 1 post, the other half seems to have engaged in some kind of discussion since their visit. Though, which side has more unique posters in favor of it I do not know. I'm too lazy for that.)
So I wouldn't say they're flocking, but there are technically "hundreds" of people who have participated in this thread.
But yeah... continuous bumping by an active few is typically how most discussion threads stay alive..

I'd definitely say Shippuu is one of the people who got this thread so big. I swear I see his original posts and quoted posts all throughout this. I do enjoy reading it though.

[artyport]

So I believe there are two distinct possibilities that could happen.

the hopeful one:
People have been asking for more customization options for a long time and this expansion will be big for that.
I noticed the viera has a new face tattoo so i'm thinking we are going to see some new expansion option in the CC.
With that they are also going to drop 2 more races and it will be the big feature of this expansion. CUSTOMIZATION.

the sad one:
Viera female/ Hrothgar males.

[Theodric]

The Warrior of Light has also been shown to be sporting a unique stubble option in recent promotional in-game footage. More facial hair has indeed been a common request for quite some time so it is my hope that they're saving an announcement for an expansion of customisation options for the upcoming Fan Fest. It'd help mitigate any bad blood that arises from the new race(s).

[Shippuu]

I do find it a bit funny that people think a new race has to be teased beforehand, and couldn't possibly be something they want to keep a secret so that it's more of a surprise. Or even just keep it more of a secret to prevent people on stewing too much for too long on potential issues or wild speculation. The vast majority of content in new expansions is stuff we'd never seen or heard about before, almost every single new beast tribe is something that was never hinted. We didn't know about the Gnath, the Vanu Vanu, the Kojin, the Ananta, the Namazu, the Lupin, the Pixies, the Nu Mou, the Dwarves etc. etc. before they were introduced in the expansions, and almost all of them were treated as just being par the course, normal fully integrated into the settings they're from.

A player race is little different in this regard, we'll be traveling to places and will likely encounter them out somewhere where we're going. The setting will treat them like they've always been there like it does for everything else, it's only a slightly jarring situation for the players. New player races don't have to be proceeded with in game hints, and even then, both of the ones we've gotten before have set a pretty low standard of what it takes to set up before hand that it's really not at all a big deal if there's no hint or build up in game to Hrothgar coming.