PTR Spoiler/Discussion Thread (Part 2)

So what you’re saying is that Mages are normal people who dumped all their time and skills into the spec tree of magic which itself has different smaller spec trees to specialize in it. Their intelligence in the field of magic will not necessarily translate into any other fields such as battle strategy or even culture or history. This would be like knowing an Elvish Spell but completely not knowing it’s historical creation or the context whether it’s considered dastardly to use or dishonorable among Elves.

Especially when you consider that he was one of the co-leaders of Shattrath under A’dal; a city that willingly accepted refugees of all races across Outland and gave them a home, from orcs, to humans, to blood elves, to arakkoa, and many more.

He’s also made into a figure that’s pretty much a spiritual successor to Antonidas during Warcraft 3, who is generally a lot more rational and ‘enlightened’ by Warcraft standards compared to basically any other human character.

Besides this, it’s really weird for him to go on about ‘superior elven intelligence’ when he was the personal apprentice of Medivh, son of Aegwynn, both of whom are described as being the most powerful mages in Azeroth short of Azshara while they’re both humans.

It’s also pretty strange for him to be the storyteller of ancient elven history that, as was pointed out before, is really weird for a human to know when elves themselves don’t know about it, such as the fact that elves came to be through arcane mutation on trolls.

It’s not just out of character for him to say something like this, it’s entirely antithetical to the concept of what Khadgar is as a character, which is a bit sad, considering there’s like five other characters that come to mind that are still alive in Warcraft lore that could’ve said something like that and have it make sense.

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This one is good but. . .isn’t it also old lore? Yeah the first “official druidic order” was made under the Night Elves but. . .Keepers, Dryads, Vrykul etc. all have been doing druidic magic and druidic stuff since like 50,000 years before the Elves came into being. Increasing the breadth of druidism is just generally good for everyone because it means we can finally start detaching it from the Nelves who have been culturally whitewashing everyone for the past 10 years of druid lore.

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Yes, and no. Malfurion is described as being the first mortal druid.

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Just as weird as it was for Shandris to gush about human potential in BfA.

It’s dumb, but at least it’s… consistently dumb?

That’s just what he wants people to think so he can continue the Kaldorei’s cultural whitewashing campaign.

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I can’t really see how this is the case. Tauren and Worgen follow Night Elven ways of druidism because they were taught druidism by them. And even if the Tauren hadn’t forgotten about their Druidism, it would probably have been similar as their ancestors were taught by Cenarius…

Troll and Kul Tiran druidism have been pretty distinct, in my opinion.

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But neither was. We know Tauren had at some point their own thing going on with Cenarius in some way and Worgen, the Gilneans, had entirely their own culture of Druidism until the Nelves showed up to Gilneas and I guess they all just forgot their gaelic/celtic-inspired pagan druidism and replaced it with [generic night elf druid animations_png].

They should all be far more distinct. It is utterly inexcusable that Blizzard creates tidbits for different culture’s forms of druidism and then just whitewashes them all to follow and kowtow to the Night Elf way of Druidism. It is beyond boring. Legion is the primary example of this evil, because the entire druid campaign is just a night elf heritage quest in disguise.

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Yeah, and they forgot about it for more than 20 generations. But like I said before, the two cultures were taught by the same being, so I doubt there were many fundamental differences between their practices.

They used nature magic, yeah. That culture still exists, as far as I know. Let’s hope we get something of that in 10.2.5.

What? We haven’t seen much about Zandalari druidism after BfA, and only a little more of Kul Tiran druidism in Shadowlands. Neither were like Night elf druidism.

Basically NElves tried to have a monopoly on the term ‘druid’ even though other people were doing druid stuff before them.

Malf was still learning druid stuff during the WotA but 2k years before that Cenarius was hanging out with the Yaungol teaching them “the secrets of the wilds”. These unnammed not-yet-Tauren were taught druidism by Cenarius before Malf was, nevermind the other cultures who didn’t need to rely on him to forge a connection with nature.

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That honestly depends on at which point you are considered a druid. Is it once you can shapeshift? Is it once you can visit the Emerald Dream? Is it when you can hear the whispers of the forest and talk to animals?
Maybe these Yaungol never got to any of these stages?

Presumably when you start tending to and caring for nature. Its not about the magic.

Says who? The druids in World of Warcraft have done nothing but use magic. A hunter is not a druid just because he has knowledge about the wilds.

Would be kinda wild for Gonk, Master of Shapes, to not teach his followers how to shapeshift for 15k years.

I’m sure if the Zandalari Empire/Empire of Zul received even a fraction of the attention that NElf history has received we’d find out that they’ve been druid stuff since before NElves even existed because…like, of course they would, they revere the loa - Wild Gods.

NElves had to rediscover reverence for Wild Gods from Cenarius. For the Zandalari and other trolls that was the core of their culture for millenia. It’s patently absurd to believe Malfurion’s version is the only one worthy of the term ‘druid’.

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There wasn’t much new stuff to see in the first place. The Zandalari and trolls in general take the shapeshifting power from Gonk, it hardly has anything to do with the Dream and it didn’t change after BfA. And Kul Tiras still have it difficult with the Dream, maybe because they’re ever between life and death and Thros was rumoured to be another piece of the Nightmare. So if anything, their developments and additional lore should be not what 10.2 is about in the first place, and perhaps more focused on the ecological side of the druidism rather than wild gods of Kalimdor and Dream mysticism.

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Isn’t this exactly what happened in Cata, in the case of the Darkspear? So not really that wild of an idea to me.

I don’t understand what the problem is, honestly. People say there isn’t enough variation in druidic cultures, but at the same time they must touch all cornerstones of Night Elven druidism? Because like it or not, the Emerald Dream has clearly been the guiding aesthetic for the Night elven druids, not the other way around.

The Darkspear are not the Zandalari. They didn’t hang out with Gonk on a daily basis. The Raptari even mention that in their dialogue.

Like, yeah, the Darkspear might need to have rediscovered it after the Empire schism’d and they became an offshoot in STV.

But the Zandalari at the centre of their Empire? Doesn’t really add up that.

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Agreed, they are not the same, but we could come up with several reason as to why he wouldn’t have taught them. Maybe has wasn’t around their place ten thousand years ago?

But again, it depends on what they mean with the term First Mortal Druid. Maybe he became such after being the first mortal to enter the Dream?

The problem is that we don’t see more than Cenarion stuff among the quests, except for Zuldazar sometimes. We don’t get to work with a pack of Raptari to even the balance between herbivores and carnivores in Mulgore, we don’t see thornspeakers removing the plague from Darkshore in their own way, we don’t even see much of tauren druid and shaman traditions intertwining. It’s only night elves and the Dream.

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Well, it was a term that came up on Chronicles, so it’s now a fallible Titan perspective anyway rather than objective statement, so who cares? It’s got as much weight (none) as Khadgar’s musings on the inferior intellect of trolls.

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