Looks a bit leaner

Yes, this was commissioned simultaneously with Wulfer-Shepherd, and either have their uses. Unktehila is my main OC for thick muscle.

I mean yeah, he could have either a leaner or thicker body type depending on the artist.

awesome

I'm quite fond of this reference work, it's good to have excellent renderings to inspire artwork that will come after.

This is an awesome looking character! I really hoped for Sethraks becoming playable in World of Warcraft but I guess the world isn't ready for snek bois yet.

It's my wish for them to become an allied race too. Like Pandaren, there are appropriate factions of them for Alliance and Horde... Devoted and Faithless, respectively. That would be ideal to add another "choose your side" race. Blizzard seems to want to do derivative model races (how many elf variants are there now?), so unless someone who really wants to revamp the game comes to their team, it's highly unlikely.

Oh yeah! I am sick of all the elf variants. In most games they are basically like humans but with long ears and being better at everything and most people dig it of course. You dont see beast races often and Blizzard had a chance to add a Snake race which probably no other game has done yet. However, I believe that with the end of the last expansion, the whole allied races thing came to an end and that there will be no new ones until MAYBE next expac if ever. Well.. at least they got dino shapes for zandalari druids, which I enjoy. And I guess the fox ppl are alright too.

The Vulpera are decent, albeit a reskinned Goblin. At least their racial gives you a 2nd hearthstone type capability, which made the weekly grind for the Shadowknight classic legendary weapon much easier to head to ICC to work toward. Finally done with all that stuff~

Also nice that druid unlocks for artifact appearances are account-wide. I recently unlocked the blue graphic for Avatar of Ursoc, which resembles Aliothe in Ardenweald. Now all my druids can look like that in bear form. Made the months of weekly boss kills in Legion worthwhile (you need 8 different ones, so at a bare minimum this is 2 months of work).

I was quits on WoW until wowhead announced the addition of Zandalari Trolls and the Druid beast forms. This for sure is my favorite race for Druids, although I'm not that keen on ankylosaur graphic for the bear form (hence why I prefer looking like Aliothe).

There's sort of a long-term question as to what a player does at renown 40, which I'm sure is going to be a growing issue later in Shadowlands. Will they let you join subsequent covenants at this stage without surrendering everything the previous gave you? If not, that's a serious sacrifice to jump covenants and likely next to zero players will go that route - easier to start an alt in a different covenant to experience their related story as you gain renown. There's a lot of mounts and pets to unlock, some aren't covenant restricted, so there's for sure a huge anima sink for people pretty much indefinitely in Shadowlands, seeing that armor graphics, mounts and pets are 5k anima (less for some armor and pets). But unless they start buffing anima awards like happened with Azerite power, the tens of thousands of anima presently represent years of grinding. To say nothing of advancing the covenant features like command center, anima channel, transportation networks, and other things.

Allied races could always be patched into Shadowlands, but they're quite likely to use the covenant races for that. If so, then having a Stoneborn race playable would be pretty cool, especially if they can fly or glide (like demon hunter or ZT). Night Fae as well could be a native flight capable playable race. Necrolord, they could use some derivative Forsaken race for those allied, and Bastion yet again possibly a flight/gliding capable race (winged smurfs).

I reckon maybe renown 40 may ultimately allow you to equip 2 legendary crafted items made in Torghast, much as Legion started with just 1 and advanced to 2 later on. That would for sure boost the market for various rune vessels (base armor) for crafting these, and as well put some incentive to have a variety of memories unlocked so you have various power choices for various different body parts. Pity you can't transmog legendaries, since the base armor graphics often are pretty impressive looking. It'd be much nicer if equipping a legendary allowed you to transmog a full suit from its armor base. Right now, the rune vessels don't add anything to transmog choices when equipped - this is consistent with legendary graphics - most only show on toons that equip the armor, and in some cases transmog allowed for those who did at one time put some on.

Legion legendaries (including artifacts) do show up on xmog nowadays, as does Shadowmorne from ICC. That's why I did the grind - xmog choice unlock for any toon that can equip that kind of weapon.

I agree, the zandalari bear form is kinda weird but since I dont play tank I dont use it often. I like the cat form and the moonkin form is nice too. Same goes with the land travel form. I often basically use a prism to use the raptor form during combat. (or the seashark form if I'm in the mood of fooling around :D )

As for the endgame and covenant stuff, I can't really say much since I am a very casual player and havent reached the end game yet. I wished they made transmogging less restrictive though. Maybe some system like the Game "Wildstar" once had. Instead of changing the appearance of every single item, you would have a loadout purely for appearance as an addition to your normal gear loadout. Bascially a second skin. This way, your outfit stays intact even if you change equipment. The gold sink would not be the appearance change of a single item but rather the unlocking of the new appearance itself. After unlocking it, you can switch and use them whenever you like. Also, no armor restrictions. A warrior with leather? sure! A mage with chain? If you like, why not? Maybe change the colour of parts of your equipment with unlockable dyes? That's the kind of customization I was hoping to see again.

EverQuest 2 is sort of like that, you have a gear slot and an appearance slot, so when you change your equipment, the new item graphic matches the old one since you keep the appearance item unchanged. They may have been more open to what goes in appearance as well, sort of a "this and lower" armor class selection. So plate users can show anything, chain users can do chain, leather and cloth, etc.

EQ2 still is a lot less graphics for armor and weapons, and a lot of variants are just color changes, so it's pretty dull to do equipment mod looks in that game anyhow.

Shadowlands storyline is probably one I've liked pretty well, up there with Pandaria and more than Legion and BfA. There's a plugin that helps a person optimize speed runs through this content, and of course quest lists on sites like wowhead for those who prefer just reading tips when they're confused what to do next. I'm pretty fond of walkthroughs; console RPGs I often like to print a walkthrough and check that I've not missed anything important in game before going to the next chapter or region.

I wonder if WoW ever gets such an upgrade for transmogging but i doubt it. I don't really speed run through stuff and play it on my speed. Maybe I even try to RP ingame. Something like a Zandalari Raptari since I already got the druid. However I am often too nervous and unprepared for such things^^

EverQuest 2... I think I only played it once a long time ago. It didnt work out for me but at least they had some nice lizard races and other unusual stuff like rats too.

WoW devs played EQ prior to creating WoW, having played that MMORPG and realizing they had a property that could be made into an MMO (Warcraft) and as well realizing that by incorporating a scripting language in the UI, it could be automated and customized well beyond anything they'd ever imagine of creating for the game in house. Therefore this is why WoW still stands out from most other MMORPGs in no others have LUA and so much of the game's API exposed to UI scripting. And yet Blizzard at least made it so clicking, navigating, interacting with the game elements requires physical keypresses and mouse clicks, so they prevented the game from being totally bot driven (it happens, but is bannable if you add automation for this purpose).

Oh interesting. Bots really are a problem, in any game. But I would usually won't even notice if someone uses them. What's your opinion on Guild Wars 2, in case you tried it.

(Also followed you because I like your character and the art of them. muscle lizards are awesome and I should draw more of em^^)

Thanks, I'm glad to receive gift art and post it here.

GW2 has some features I'd like seeing in WoW, chiefly the instantaneous travel. There are times when you can end up watching a flight take 20 minutes going from a very northern point of Kalimdor to a very southern point, for example. GW2 would save you that useless connect/game time if it were to make all travel just warp you instead. I boggle at how much electricity is spent waiting on these useless indulgent depictions of 60 MPH travel across miles of terrain just to show off how "real" the world is. All the thousands of players waiting to arrive just to continue gaming. Their PC electricity wasted toward no entertainment value whatever.

The exploration and encounter challenges have some vague equivalent in WoW, just not as elaborate and widespread as in GW2. And now with mounts in that game, some of the exploration challenges are made very easy. Just as flying mounts makes for avoiding challenges in travel, regular mounts do this to a somewhat lesser degree.

I'm fond enough of Charr in GW2 but that's about the only race of interest for me there. WoW at least has Zandalari Troll (chiefly for Druid play with me), Vulpera, Tauren, Worgen - all races that are attractive enough for me in game. EQ2 chiefly has Iksar and Sarnak, but Ratonga and Kerran are decent enough.

GW2 also has a much more attractive entry price, just buy the game and you're generally set. Better still in some way, EQ2 is totally free to download and play, where subscription and microtransactions cover perks and conveniences that aren't mandatory for advancement.

Zandalari druid buddies!
Yea, instant teleport sure is useful, but I can already hear mages raging about their portal class ability being made more or less useless, if WoW would introduce such instant teleports haha.

I like the exploration and feel of movement in gw2 and the charr is nice to, so is the fact of having a fully voice story about your character.
Unfortunately, I can't talk much about eq2 due to lack of playtime but I assume it has something good in it if its around for such a long time. MMOs are a risky business and can get companies bankrupt, if they can't keep up a stable paying playerbase in this highly competitive genre. Reminds me of Dragon's Prophet, that got shut down. Not really a good game but you can tame frikking dragons, let them aid you in battle and ride/fly them no matter what class you play.

Dragon's Prophet likely was the last MMO I had game time with an old EQ pal who's in Washington state now. It was neat having him show me around, how to get and develop more dragons. I liked it well enough to keep gaming had it remained in operation.

Star Wars Galaxies has fan servers (Legends being my fave). They added races and kept the pre-nerf game conditions (the nerf basically made players abandon it in droves). There you have Trandoshan for a scaly, Wookiee, Mon Calamari, Bothan and other exotics - plus the Bio Engineers can craft pets like Rancor and Krayt Dragon which are awesomely huge.

SWG scripting does allow for craft grinding AFK so I remember setting that up to max out tradeskills while I browsed the net and talked via chat to friends. There still are web pages with macros for SWG toward this purpose.

WoW's main thrust is getting the best conduits set up and your item level/gear powers optimal, just so you can go after endgame content just for even better gear. That's a treadmill that doesn't interest me. I tend to try and collect toys, pets and especially mounts in game. That feeds my OCD pretty well.

Hm I haven't heard of Galaxies or Legends. I only know that there is some Old Republic Star Wars game that is still running. Although I like Star wars, I never felt the urge to play an MMO of it. I guess in this case, I am more of a guy that enjoy the Battlefront games and roll around as a Droideka, which I particularly like :D

As for WoW, the urge for increasing gear levels might come from the wish to stay competitive ingame. But since I dont really do stuff like PvP (except Warmode, where I get wrecked often), I don't care as much for it to invest time for raiding. I think the last thing I did, was sitting by a campfire in OG and play music with the musician addon. random people tend to join, chat or play music themselves.

Since it's a free fansite (it does require the original game disks but there are sources for that, various archives), this might be worth a visit: https://swglegends.com/

They have droid engineers and I believe Droideka is one of the more advanced blueprints available. It has some story, but opens up to an open world pretty quickly after the intro. It's possible to be a musician and perform, and as well be a entertainer and dance. The music playing and dancing are well in advance of WoW and most MMOs that came out since.

Player housing is another thing people get into - decorating the interior with items they've crafted and collected, including pets, droids, crafting stations and so forth. You can even set up an NPC that sells items you've made like a broker.