Why (and how) the Lizards Should Return

In my last post I wrote about how I have one of the few remaining lizardman characters. What this post is about is why it was wrong for them to be taken out of the game, why they should be brought back and how to make them more popular.

Lizardmen disappeared in early 2001. I still remember logging on and trying to make a new lizardman warrior only to find it couldn't be done. After asking around I heard that they'd been removed because they weren't popular enough. This bothered me as there was no official announcement, no warnings, no attempts to make them more popular and no mention of any ways for them to return. Even when they have the occasional raffle where the prize is to be able to make a character of any race/class combination there is always an except lizardman clause. Generally I respect the decisions the Council of Elders makes and believe they are in the best interests of the game. This decision I did not because afterall what harm were the lizards doing to the game?

I can understand why lizardmen weren't very popular. They could only be warriors or rangers and the base stats for them were generally terrible. The base stats for my lizardman ranger are:

Your base stats:    18 str 9  int 9  wis 11 dex 17 con 12 cha 9  lck.
Your current stats: 25 str 12 int 10 wis 20 dex 17 con 12 cha 12 lck.

Tyring to maximise strength, dexterity and wisdom for a ranger with those stats is tough. The funny thing is this problem has been fixed. When they removed statnames from the game they replaced it with a system where all new characters had their statistics add up to 100. This has been tweaked so that now new characters  have their statistics add to 95. The above stats only add up to 85.

The second problem of only having two classes for lizardmen has also been fixed. Since lizards have gone they have added barbarians, bladesingers and fathomers which I think would all be perfect for lizardmen.

The next problem with lizardmen was the lack of special equipment. Half-orcs, half-trolls and half-ogres were always more popular due the racial equipment they had available. Recently there have been racial sets available for dwarves, halflings and gnomes as well as several other minor pieces of racial equipment. Bringing in a lizardman set of equipment would make the race more popular and could be used to develop a series of quests or a storyline for the race.

I believe there is a lot of potential for the lizardman race in the game and I know people would like to play a lizardman character if they could. I was once asked by an immortal how I would feel if they brought back lizards and mine was no longer rare. My response was that I would be happy because I'd love to make a few new lizards myself.