Races in role playing games et al.

 Remember when Starcraft came out with three truly unique races... that was the first experience we had of distinguishable races on both a tactical and cosmetic level.

Now days, its the RPGs I look to to come up with more races. Its just something I see lacking. I mean, its always human, elf, orc, dwarf... it would be great to find a game with 10 or so. Call me weird but this is what im looking for... I have a feeling there are more weirdos out there.

Take World of Warcraft for example.... I was undead with good reason. To me the undead were the most unique race in their culture, not particularly in gameplay, but they were as differentiatable in this respect as the other races. But still, aside from the ability to talk in gutterspeak and a couple of attributes, nothing about the actual functionality of being undead set them apart from other races.

Now I think WOW and Everquest 2 both need to be commended for their treatment of races, but we need something new... something that seems like the next generation of racial evolution just as starcraft did for us years ago. Something with more depth. For example, the Tauren, Undead and Humans in World of Warcraft all have the same economic systems, they should be different on a functional level. To this end, I think Starcraft still has a more brilliant outlook on racial strategy than any RPG I have seen has pulled off (Excapt for Fallout 1 and 2 which I will discuss in the next paragraph). I mean, the Zerg creep as opposed to the Terran building system and the Protos building system was completely unique and revolutionary.

Fallout 1 and 2: Brilliant, in fallout 2 each city you visited had such an interesting take on culture etc. This is what made it such a cult hit. The developers scratched the cultural surface of the game world they created. And even in both Starcraft and Fallout 1 & 2 I still see room for more cultural depth.

I think the central issue here is that developers making games with open ended structures as most RPGs are becoming and MMORPGs certainly are need to find that depth of story that leading the gamer on a predetermined path provides. Older games did it better because the player was led on a more restricted path... so the story could be structured for them. The newer, bigger, more open ended games need to build that level of story into each players by containing more interesting, complete, diverse cultures.

So now I return to races. I would love to see a game come out with 10 truly unique races... a game with 5 truly unique races would be acceptable too. And by this I mean that the races of World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 are not cutting it for me in their depth and diversity.

Heres my message to devs:

Cut the Politically correct rubbish, stop pansying around make something you truly believe in. I want the person who helms the next Starwars RPG to scream "Theyre cutting the fingers off my baby" when some bigshot tries to dilute the sheer madness they have infused their game with.