Spreading out on lore.

[SpringWheat]

Although the world of Lauren Faust seems to include a multitude of mythical creatures, only several of the prominently sentient ones seem fixed to one type; that is, the griffins and unicorns. I believe it is slightly more well known that the English unicorn we all know and love (?) is just one type under that name, but the griffin is equally varied. Yes, I know that there are cyno griffins...but those aren't really one of the distinct types of griffins in world mythology, with hypogriffins being another thing entirely. In fact, some griffins in folklore do not have beaks or wings at all!

While you may think that the eagle-headed griffin is the standard, in truth that is not entirely the case- from the English Isles to the hypothetical origin of the Griffin, the far East, time has produced at least four distinct types of griffin. Three of the four have a likely chance to be incorporated into Lauren's world, which are such:

The griffin already present in canon, although like the other two has it's own sub-types; an earless griffin called the Opinicus, whom is exactly the same save for it's obvious lack of ears. The Axex is clearly more distinct, but still retains the generic features to be a sub-species: It has a body more slender, and both the head and wings of a hawk instead of an eagle. The Axex would do well to be in the land of zebras, given it's origin in Egyptian mythology.

With unicorns already being one of three horse types in My Little Pony, it would be appropriate for the varieties to be emphasized on a lesser scale than griffins.

[flutterscotch]

While this is a good idea, this is not currently scalable to the World of Equestria forum with the bandwidth we currently have, especially as we are still working on releasing lore that we have already seen in Season 3 of the show. The introduction of each new species brings to the table a new set of lore and traditions that has to be created, catalogued and made ready for the users to rely on. Then the entirety of the RP Helper team needs to be able to remember each of the different rules and quirks of each race and apply them to the vetting of applications. For this reason, we will be sticking to species and varieties and strains thereof that we see on the show, within reason (of course, we will generally not allow a species if it is deemed over-powered). Cynogriffins and the like are actually races that are a holdover from the very early rules of this forum when there were far fewer users and scalability wasn't as much of an issue (an exception, not the rule).

And remember, the forum that official lore is generally applied to is World of Equestria. Equine-focused, and slice-of-life.

You are always welcome to apply for and play any variety of any mythological creature in the other two subforums.

[Rosewind]

I should also add that it takes a great deal of time to flesh out the lore and accepted canon of any race, not just griffons. Crystal Ponies are still in development as of writing this, due to the fact that they require areas to play as well as information relative to the character that a player can use to design them. As Scotch said, the other griffon subtypes are an echo from the previous (and old) rules of our game, and new non-canon additional characters to WoE have been put on hold.

It's easy to say "we should have this" for the game, but the reality is any new change needs careful consideration, due to the high quality standards we have for the game, and any potential contingency a change or addition can make on the game environment we wish to preserve.

[SpringWheat]

I understand.