Female dwarves are on the way? :)

[Wanderv]

Dis is quite nice dwarven woman especially for its age. What a long braid!

Soooooo, will avatar revamp include really female dwarves? I want female dwarves with braids!!!

[Linawillow]

Here's a screenshot of Dís.

[Fenix43]

OMG !!! e..e crazy! not seen in beta where is the npC !?

[Linawillow]

She's inside Raven Hill, just south-west of Erebor

[Fenix43]

But then there is only her? do I have any other NPC dwarfs in beta? because maybe maybe ... the dwarves are receiving a strong revamp, also because I want to point out that when you select in the character cheration the race of the dwarves the loading appears a black screen from 5m-3m and much longer than normal ... SSG is hiding something in this beta and does not want to let us see it?

[Gaming_Gal]

I'm confused, but I'm also not a hard core lorist.

Dís had a Longbeard father, though there is no mention of her mother's family lineage.

So...what's with the super short beard?

I'm guessing the hair draped around her neck is her head hair from the image, but giving her a shortbeard is wrong as far as my limited knowledge goes. I don't ever recall an occasion where her beard was shorn (or burned!). If it's supposed to be her beard, I don't see in that image where the hair is connected to her beard.

[Herwegur]

Here's a screenshot of Dís.

Dís is... a Dís-tinguished Dís-play, if silghtly Dís-orienting yet not altogether cognitively Dís-onant. No Dís intended, I cannot Dísapprove.

[Namesse]

I'm kind of disturbed that I see a vague resemblance to my grandmother around the eyes and face shape.

Grandma never had a beard though.

[Picard2009]

Hmm... She really just looks like nearby auntie to me

[Pontin_Finnberry]

I'd like the NPC more if she had a bigger beard sorry but that's the way dwarves are, should have at least same beard size of Beard #14 for dwarves on the character creation.

[Dinara]

Oh! this is excellent!
Please SSG, if you are going to include longer beards, make it an OPTION! As in Real Life, if you DON'T like the way I look, DON'T LOOK AT ME!

[YamydeAragon]

Here's a screenshot of Dís.

Neat! She looks like my grandma but with beard. She likes to keep her hair short & well trimmed.

[Taldeen]

More of the lore out of the window. I wonder whats left of lord of the rings in this game in 2 years...
Dwarf-women

[Wagoo]

To be fair, if Dis (whose existence has already been confirmed well before LOTRO was a thing) is literally the only female Dwarf in the game, that would certainly qualify as 'seldom-seen'. If other Dwarfs with Dis's body type are added and they end up being male, that'd work too (since it would mean there's no way of knowing who's a guy or a girl).

[Alhvar]

Here's a screenshot of Dís.

Wow. This is significant. It looks like the developers have at last recognized the existance of female dwarves. Hopefully we will get female dwarven player characters too sometime soon, if they are not too lazy for that. If every third dwarf is meant to be female they are not really that rare.

[Herwegur]

So...what's with the super short beard?

She had a fundraiser and donated most of it to a good cause, now growing it out again

It looks like the developers have at last recognized the existance of female dwarves. Hopefully we will get female dwarven player characters too sometime soon, if they are not too lazy for that. If every third dwarf is meant to be female they are not really that rare.

Some of the dwarf NPCs in Moria are hinted at being female, albeit subtly. But I agree, this is a significant addition. Since dwarves are getting avatar revamps, I'm all for adding more faces / heads options to give players more choices in appearances.

(As for rarity, it's kinda a moot point: most hobbit player-characters leave the Shire to go adventuring, most human hunters/cappies are Dunadan ranger-types or Gondorian nobles, most Elf toons are superheroes from First Age, plus the addition of Beornings and High Elves as playable races made the skin-changers and Noldor very ubiquitous. It's more about freedom to choose how and who one wants to play in an MMO... What others do doesn't have to figure into one's own immersion. Just like the Rifleman's Creed: "there are many like it but this one is mine.")

[Marancil]

Can someone prove she is female dwarf? I saw her and had a good look, apart from the stupid smile I only thought the beard looked a bit weird, but female? Come on!

[Lady_Lethargy]

Can someone prove she is female dwarf? I saw her and had a good look, apart from the stupid smile I only thought the beard looked a bit weird, but female? Come on!

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/D%C3%ADs

[greendarner]

Is JRR Tolkien a good enough authority for you, Marancil? She was Thorin Oakenshield's sister and mother to Fili and Kili. Probably not a reliable source, though, right? Come on! Who believes that old professor guy?!

[Herwegur]

Can someone prove she is female dwarf? I saw her and had a good look, apart from the stupid smile I only thought the beard looked a bit weird, but female? Come on!

1. As Tolkienian dwarf names (the public, non-Khuzdûl ones) tend to originate from Old Norse cognates, it is perhaps a very telling sign that the word Dís in Old Norse means "lady" or "goddess", distinctly feminine.

2. The NPC's bust line in proportion to the waist is perhaps a very telling sign as well.

3. This character appears in Appendix A of Lord of the Rings, in the section "Durin's Folk". Direct citation: "Dís was the daughter of Thráin II. She is the only dwarf-woman named in these histories." (She's also Thorin's sister, and mother of Fili and Kili.)

QED

[Marancil]

1. As Tolkienian dwarf names (the public, non-Khuzdûl ones) tend to originate from Old Norse cognates, it is perhaps a very telling sign that the word Dís in Old Norse means "lady" or "goddess", distinctly feminine.

2. The NPC's bust line in proportion to the waist is perhaps a very telling sign as well.

3. This character appears in Appendix A of Lord of the Rings, in the section "Durin's Folk". Direct citation: "Dís was the daughter of Thráin II. She is the only dwarf-woman named in these histories." (She's also Thorin's sister, and mother of Fili and Kili.)

QED

ok then...

[Thakalgundian]

It is my understanding that the reason for not introducing a female dwarf character into the game was the much-quoted line from the appendices in which it is said that female dwarves seldom travelled in the outside world, only in great need, and when they did, they were dressed as dwarf men; with similar voice and appearance as male dwarves, even when they were rarely seen they were usually mistaken for a male. Noting also that all Dwarves had beards from the beginning of their lives, that included the females.

This to me, was a valid reason for only having one character model for dwarves, after all the outside world could not tell the difference anyway and both genders should sound and appear very much alike. So when you create a dwarf, it is you, the player, that make up your mind if this dwarf of yours is female or male.

Introducing Dís into the game, with clearly female shapes, seems to undermine this argument heavily in my opinion. Because if this character clearly has a female shape and appearance, then why not the player's character?

In my view, by introducing Dís in this form, SSG can no longer use the above argument to justify the player character being a unisex dwarf shape.
Not only is the body shape of Dís different, her beard style and face are clearly more feminine than the current player characters form.

Though I adore the fact that Dís was introduced into the game with this update (thank you devs) and I look forward to the available quests and stories she'll have to tell, we can’t ignore this creates a problem for the player base and the previous (valid) argument for not including female dwarf shapes.

One could argue that the above lines from the appendices could mean that female dwarves deliberately altered their appearance when going out side, as to deceive non-dwarves (by speaking in a lower voice, wrapping their chest to appear male, etc... ), yet you’ve placed Dís in a public spot where all races will interact with her in her clearly female form, contradicting what was mentioned in these appendices.

In conclusion, if/when Dís would appear like this in the game, the previous argument goes out the window and SSG (in my view) needs to introduce the option for dwarves to select a female appearance, regardless if it goes against the established lore (seeing you’ve made that argument void by introducing Dís in this form).

[OldMadeOfLions]

SSG (in my view) needs to introduce the option for dwarves to select a female appearance, regardless if it goes against the established lore (seeing you’ve made that argument void by introducing Dís in this form).

Dís is a named character from the books, so she naturally has a unique appearance. But she's not the first female dwarf we've seen in LOTRO.

MoL

[Altair6]

Dís is a named character from the books, so she naturally has a unique appearance. But she's not the first female dwarf we've seen in LOTRO.

MoL

Cue the sound of many scurrying feet.

[Lady_Lethargy]

Dís is a named character from the books, so she naturally has a unique appearance. But she's not the first female dwarf we've seen in LOTRO.

MoL

I think Thakalgundian has a very valid point, though. You've introduced a completely new body type for dwarf women (or some of them, at least) and there's absolutely no reason our playable dwarves shouldn't be able to look similar, unless I missed the passage in the lore where it said "and Dís, unlike all other dwarf women, had boobs and a feminine face." She's a unique canon character, sure, and she should be set apart, but this isn't the way to do it. Please either significantly defeminize her or let us play dwarves with that body type.