World of Warcraft’s next patch adds surprise customization options

When World of Warcraft: Shadowlands launched, there was with a buffet of character customization options for humans, night elves, orcs, and undead. However, a few of the races — especially the game’s Allied Races, which don’t have their own starting zone and can only be unlocked in the end game — fell a little short. Blizzard stated that they would not be revisiting the issue during Shadowlands, but it looks like that’s about to change. On Thursday, a community manager shared the following information on the official Blizzard forums.

Our characters in game are a virtual representation of who we are in Azeroth and having more character customization options to design our characters helps us feel closer to them. Shadowlands brought a whole array of new customization options to the player races in World of Warcraft, but there were a few of the Allied Races that didn’t get as much attention as the rest.

Back at BlizzConline in February, we stated that we had no plans to add additional customization options until after Shadowlands, but after hearing the passionate feedback around the issue, we looked into whether we could implement more options sooner. We’re pleased to announce that 9.1.5 will introduce new character customization options for Nightborne and Lightforged Draenei which include: new hair styles, hair colors, facial hair, skin colors, accessories, horns, tail length, tattoos, and more!

In addition to new customization options for Lightforged Draenei and Nightborne, 9.1.5 will also introduce other cosmetics such as:

Ear Size options for Void Elves

New Travel Forms for Druids

New Soulshapes for Night Fae

New Crittershapes to unlock: Soulshape into an adorable squirrel or other small critters. Note: Due to their tiny appearances, they are only usable in rested areas.

Option to Soulshape and Crittershape into randomly collected appearances.

New Toys

We’ll be continuing to expand our character customization in the future, with our sights set on Highmountain Tauren next.

This is welcome news for role-players and Legion fans, both of whom have been disappointed with lacking customization options. The Nightborne have been a point of contention for World of Warcraft fans since they were added at the end of Legion and beginning of Battle for Azeroth, as they only had a scant handful of faces, hairstyles, and hair colors. It looks as though players will be able to mix things up a little more, which is great for such a popular race.

It remains to be seen when Patch 9.1.5 will be released, or what other content it includes. Many fans are stepping away from World of Warcraft entirely, however.

Activision Blizzard faces wide-ranging allegations that it maintains a toxic workplace environment that is particularly hostile to women, pays them less, and subjects them to sexual harassment, and that perpetrators are not meaningfully punished, according to a lawsuit filed by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing in July. You can read more about the allegations against Activision Blizzard in Polygon’s explainer.

Some World of Warcraft players are even using their remaining game time to conduct in-game protests.