In pretty much any MMO, you have two options when it comes to races. The first is a situation wherein there are several different races, possibly with various class restrictions (World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, The Elder Scrolls Online, the list goes on). The second is a situation wherein you only have one playable race, and that race is always humans (Guild Wars, PlanetSide 2, and so forth). All well and good. But why don’t we have games where you have only one race without it being humans?
It sounds weird, but it’s really not. The Hobbit barely touches upon its human characters, with the major figures being dwarves and the eponymous hobbit. Willow has a human as a traveling companion, but the protagonist isn’t human. Books like Watership Down and Tailchaser’s Song keep human characters almost entirely in the background. We have a rich history of either avoiding human characters or having them serve as figures in the background in literature, films, and other games.
But maybe that’s a good decision after all; perhaps no one would play a game in which all of the player characters were orcs, or elves, or demons, or whatever else you can think of. What about you? Would you play an MMO that forced you to play one non-human race? For that matter, would it depend upon the non-human race in question?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
