Blood Elf Models Will Be Delayed

Blizzard first talked about updating character models some time before Mists of Pandaria, and the new models are arguably one of the flagship features of Warlords of Draenor. When the models were officially announced, Blizzard noted a few caveats: they didn't guarantee that they would all be there for launch, and at the time, they only guaranteed updates for vanilla models.

However, more recently, they confirmed that the Burning Crusade races - Draenei and Blood Elves, would be getting their own updates, and they even said that the Cataclysm races could get some love (though with these they made it clear that the Cata races would only get their updates after everyone else got them.)

The models have been coming along pretty well, and so the conservative estimates of only releasing a few of them with launch have grown a bit more optimistic, such that it looks like we'll be seeing just about all of them come 6.0.

Except the Blood Elves.

Sorry, Belfs. According to Blizzard, they did not feel they could do the Blood Elves justice in time for launch. While some may scream Alliance favoritism (for a change,) I can't really argue that the Draenei were not a bigger priority for this expansion. The Draenei are the second-most important race in this new expansion, and play an absolutely central role for the Alliance, and a pretty big one for the Horde as well (I'm given to understand that even Horde players will interact a lot with Yrel.)

The Blood Elves are not unseen, though, in Warlords, as they play a big role for Horde players in Talador in the fight against the Shadow Council.

It would be cool to have every new model out by launch, but I think that if you were going to delay any race revamp, it would be the Blood Elves. The BC races both certainly look dated, but they're still a big step up from vanilla, despite only coming out about two years later. And while I'd caution against inferring from omission, this also might suggest that 9/10 of the scheduled-to-be-revamped races will be getting their models.

Excluding Blood Elves, that leaves only Male Night Elves and both Trolls to be revealed in some way. Currently on the Beta, we're missing those as well as Male Humans and Female Tauren. There's still work to be done (in addition to the whole facial posing thing, they really have to fix the angle of Male Draenei shoulder armor!) but things are looking pretty decent.

In terms of art assets, I know we're still waiting on nearly all cutscenes, perhaps some new building models (some of the garrison buildings look identical regardless of which tier of that building you have) and we're missing music in most of the zones. But there's a lot that is in there (the Arrakoa - both the winged and clip-winged kind - look awesome.)

I know that this will piss off a large number of Horde players, given the popularity of the Blood Elves, but I'm sure we'll see these models implemented very soon after launch - probably in 6.1, if not even in a minor patch before then.

Plus, this means that Blood Elves will have the oldest character models in the game for a little bit, which is... cool... I guess.

We're still waiting to see Trolls, though I think the two normal-looking trolls from the Council of Elders in Throne of Thunder are most likely a good indicator of what we'll be seeing.

And we haven't heard a peep about those cosmetic trinkets they were talking about a few months ago.