Racials

[Daemus]

Any info on what is happening with the racials in Cata?  I thought they were going to be changing them some?

[Tarn]

:effort: They gave up and nothing much has changed.

[Goull]

Here's the official depressing word, cut/pasted from mmo-champion:

During Blizzcon 2009, you mentioned plans to revamp the racials for all the races to make them as cool and useful as Worgen and Goblin's, but only made a few tweaks in the end. Is there any reason why you changed your mind?

Blizzard: Well, I mean the racials are extremely dicey to change. It's very difficult to change those without creating far-reaching problems in the game. They're like a multiplier on the class stuff. So I think we tend to be a little more conservative with changing, where with class stuff where we're pretty aggressive about making significant changes.

Interestingly I think the racials are something that a lot of players are comfortable with and get used to over time. We've managed to contain them to be pretty small, and I definitely have fears that if we go and do a big overhaul that we would actually turn them into more than they really need to be, and cause problems for the game in doing so.

While I definitely can't say racials are perfect as they are now -- they're not perfect -- I feel like they're at a level where considering all the balance difficulties in Cataclysm going into the game, in 2009 I think that in some ways we were tackling too many balance problems and fundamental changes at the same time. I don't think an overhaul to racials is something we could add to that mix.