A small but important detail drives some fans of World of Warcraft mad. Because their character has a bald head, even though they shouldn’t.
In World of Warcraft, there are now countless ways to customize your character – with housing soon even more. But in everyday life, the most important thing is probably the appearance through the transmog set. But anyone who wants to wear a cool hat or helmet has to give up one thing: hair.
Because most hats and helmets ensure that the chosen hairstyle is hidden, and the character instead has a bald head. Of course, otherwise the hair would “clip through the helmet” – and that would look terrible. That this is still the case after more than 20 years in WoW makes some quite unhappy.
What has the community done? In response, Odd_Giraffe6440 created a small graphic that suspiciously resembles blackmail letters made from cut-out newspaper letters. The simple question on it: “Can we finally have hats and hair at the same time, I’m tired of having a bald head.”
Why can’t this be fixed so easily? Players keep pointing out that a “hat and hair” combo can’t be so hard, after all, there are also NPCs in the game that wear it that way. The catch, however, is that for these NPCs, special attention was given to ensure that the corresponding hat or helmet fits the chosen hairstyle.
But this is not the case for player characters. There are (across all races) hundreds of hairstyles, and each individual hat in the game would have to be manually reviewed and revised accordingly. This is an extremely high effort, considering that there are now thousands of different helmets and hats that would then have to be adjusted for hundreds of hairstyles and that would have to be repeated again for all future races and new hairstyles.
As travman064 summarizes in the Reddit post:
Making a hood for Jaina: 1 model, one hairstyle, the cap is part of her model – so the cap does not go over the hair, but the cap and hair are the same object.
Your character is like a Lego figure, with a helmet placed on top. NPCs are Lego figures with helmets painted on.
Each individual helmet would have to be adjusted for each hairstyle in the game to even come close to the look of Sylvanas / Jaina. That would be at least 100 times more work.
The task seems daunting and only grows exponentially over time. Because with new races come new hairstyles, meaning adjustments would again have to be made for all existing helmets and hats. A task that seems so large that it probably isn’t worth the effort.
Should players be given a choice? One wish of the community is for a more pragmatic solution: players should simply have the choice of whether their hair is displayed and then awkwardly sticks out through the helmet or cap. Those who don’t want that could simply reactivate the “bald head” function and everything would be as before.
Whether Blizzard will be persuaded to such a “half-baked” solution remains to be seen. Because the reaction to it could also be devastating if suddenly all characters in the game are running around with oddly distorted faces where their hats are fused with their hair. What solution would you prefer? A lot of new customizations are also coming soon in Legion Remix – but one specific thing is missing and many are upset about it.
