If they retroactively restricted classes to fewer races again and tauren priests would be on the chopping block, I would be 100% fine with that. Given that they have made zero efforts to differentiate the class from the human and void centricism, I would just turn him into a shaman and rp him as a dark shaman. Very little would change.
I am fine with deviations from a racial stereotype, provided they are done within the established framework that exists. If the framework did not include tauren priests or sunwalkers, great. That would be fine with me.
At this point, it might be for the best if we agree to disagree, because I can absolutely think of character concepts for dwarf druids or undead paladins that don’t deviate from the lore, just like how non-pandaren monks don’t.
Mecha druids are a little harder to justify due to how diametrically opposed the race and class aesthetics and lore are, but there’s probably a way around it, just like how Blizzard was able to make lightforged warlocks are a thing.
I guess we just look at the settings in different ways. You seem to put more value on the integrity of the different racial cultures and creating characters who are extensions of their racial culture or must operate within the confines of that culture, whereas I believe that characters can interact with the entirety of the setting as independent agents, not just as their race or their class, though those factors may play a part in forming their beliefs and behaviours.
“I want cultural/racial archetypes and narrative to remain prevalent without diluting them with every class” and “I want every race/class combo to be playable” are theoretically two co-existent concepts.
Just not how Blizzard does it.
Anyway letting Blood Elves be warriors was a mistake and they should be removed.
RPG lore. The problem with a lot of these races and factions is that the only major lore detailing their inner workings are from said RPG books, so, it’s a bit hard to discern what’s still canon for them or not, compared to things like the lore of the main core races of WoW.
We’ve never seen a Wildhammer Druid in-game though, so, there’s that.
Although lets be honest things like Druidism are hardly ever going to be difficult to explain on any race, especially because RPG lore for how each race connects to nature already exists so you can just steal Metzen’s work from 20 years ago and use that. Alternatively, “I started hearing the wind rustling through the trees/a voice from a dream teaches me/a nature spirit is my mentor”. People I feel often miss the woods for the trees on these things, most concepts can theoretically be done poorly or well, some are just easier than others.
Half-Elf RPG Druid Lore my beloved, outcast from society and thus Nature takes them in as its guardians and children.
Something that I miss from Metzen’s pre-Legion work is the fact that he wrote things like this rather than just cram everything into one neutral catch-all faction.
The writers showed potential that they are capable of doing these things decades ago, but, given the most recent memory of the writing team’s additions to the lore, I can see why some people are that cynical about any of these additions possibly ever making sense.
“We held direct conversations with wild gods for thousands of years, and it took us to start wearing tree branches as shoulderpads for you to realize we’re doing the same thing?!”
“Listen, it’s a bit difficult to hold debates about religious practices while we’re both beating each other up!”
I can think of said concepts too- And I have. As you pointed out, Atahalni is most certainly not one of your typical tauren, even for Grimtotem.
Could you RP a gnome druid that always felt connected to nature and didn’t really fit in with the rest of his peers- And as a result travelled to a glade and became a druid? Yeah. For sure. Technically nothing stops a gnome from doing that. If another titanic race like Kul Tirans can do it, then they could as well.
Could you RP an undead paladin akin to Sir Zeliek from Naxxramas, somebody who has been a thing since Vanilla? For sure. An exception proves the rule’s existance.
But again, we return to the question of -Should you-. Warcraft was, as you know, founded depending on the source that you ask on a footing that somewhat borrows from the Warhammer fantasy setting. And in Both warhammer and WoW, classes being restricted to races is very much a thing since the beginning, though other races might have somethibg similar but still very distinctive and original to them.
Think of a Slann mage priest vs a high elf mage, or a dwarf mountain king vs tauren chieftain. There is some overlap in their function and abilities, but culturally they are very distinct from one another.
This was certainly true to WoW going from Classic until Cataclysm. Some of it has been positive (e.g. hunter, warrior and rogue being available to all), some negative (troll druids*, tauren paladins / priests, zandalari paladins).
these are only bad because Blizzard doesn’t offer any better fitting form options for the non nelf/tauren variants.
A tauren Sunwalker and a human paladin in this regard are a perfect example to use. Much like Elenthas said, it is fine if they made Tauren Paladins distinctively different from their Human counterparts, but alas, they did not, and as a result the whole class feels forced and out of place in the race.
Could I think of a tauren crusader who is wholly devoted to the light and who has been tutored by argent crusade paladins? Yes I could. I could probably write it well too, but I don’t because I find it despicable.
When everyone is special through out of the box, suspension of disbelief of ideas, then nobody is. You can do them all at the cost of the integrity of the setting.
What you are describing with class ambiquity certainly is a thing in a setting like DND, but WoW is not a DND setting. And that is why it stands out like a sore thumb for me. And I hate it.
Anyway yeah lets agree to disagree. You like eating your favourite dish in a way it is frankly not supposed to be eaten like, but you enjoy it so good on you. To me, the rules and rituals around my favourite dishes are part of the experience that would ultimately be less if I diverged from them for one reason or another.
I think what matters more/most here is honestly the RPer and how they do it. There are a lot of ways to do this concept that are “bad”, so its easy to fall into the 100 indiana jones traps you’ve set up for yourself whilst you try to escape the Temple of Character Creation.
This isn’t really true, at least not for Warhammer Fantasy, but you actually answer this yourself by explaining that each faction has its own racially-distinctive version which is correct but not the whole context. The Tomb Guard are the Tomb Kings version of the Reiksguard which are the Empire’s version of the Ironguard which are the Dwarves version of the High Elves Phoenix Guard and so-on-and-so-forth. They are all racially distinct with that unique racially twist however they are all functionally the exact same (minus some, again, racial distinction features).
WoW was built from the ground-up by Blizzard Entertainment to mimic the Dungeons and Dragons experience as closely as possible, you can find hundreds of old videos from WoW developers talking about how D&D shaped every facet of this franchise from the ground-up, even the RPG in its entirety is a DnD (4e?) offshoot. The WoW RPG also features several racially distinct but functionally similar classes based upon WoW races.
It sounds like the issue here is not “I dislike race-class unlocks” but rather a case of disliking Blizzard’s (frankly inexcusably incompetent) way of actually handling such unlocks. Would you be alright with Sunwalkers if they had come from a lengthy unlock questline featuring Aponi Brightmane travelling back to the ancient lands of the Shu’halo to uncover lost histories of An’she teachings through which ancient Shu’halo harnessed the Sun’s blazing fire and as such had distinct aesthetic differences from Paladins? (but still served the exact same purpose).
I agree with this, purely because every warrior tmog i see on them looks trash.
Edit: To actually add to the conversation, i don’t mind any race being any class. I just don’t think the classes should be state supported. I don’t really think the gnomes having a league of engineering trained druids or whatever who have a massive room in Ironforgr is very cash money. But a lone gnome found at some enclave in Val’sharrah? Whatever.
About Warcraft not being a D&D setting, I’m not sure if I agree with that. The Warcraft RPG came out before World of Warcraft and played an important part in fleshing out the setting and presenting the world in a way that could be explored in RPG format before WoW did it, and it just so happens that WoW outright copied a lot of the Warcraft RPG’s lore.
The Warcraft RPG is also a d20 D&D clone, which heavily influenced a lot of the world-building decisions in that RPG, which bled into WoW. A life-plane and a death-plane and elemental planes and an astral plane? Inspired by D&D. Outsiders returning to their planes of origin upon death? Inspired by D&D. Like it or not, there’s a whole lot of D&D DNA in World of Warcraft.
Warcraft also has the ‘kitchen sink’ of cultures and technologies that typifies a lot of D&D settings. High tech teleporters, submarines, and airships right next to swords and sorcery. Viking tallboys alongside ancient egyptian cat-centaurs.
It’s not as wide or as deep as some, perhaps, but it’s definitely adjacent and borrows/‘is inspired by’ a lot of it.
3e. 4e was itself heavily inspired by WoW. For example:
All of this is true except for the life-plane. The Feywild appeared in D&D 4e and was inspired by the Emerald Dream, not the other way round. Also I feel like some D&D 5e elements, such as the Circle of Stars druid and the more colorful and whimsical illustrations in recent 5e books, were inspired by Warcraft. There is cross-pollination going on.
Warcraft might not be an official D&D setting, but it’s definitely a D&D-like setting. It was heavily inspired by D&D in its stats, subraces and monsters, and takes many similar assumptions about the world.
The Feywild as a concept appeared before WoW was released. The earliest I can find for it was the Manual of the Planes (2001). Back then it was called the ‘Plane of Faerie’ and, honestly, doesn’t bear a great deal of resemblance to how we know of the Dream today.
The Outer Plane of Faerie is a land of soft lights and cruel desires, the home of powerful elflike beings that care little for mortals other than as playthings and prey. It is a country of little people with great desires. It is a place of music and death.
