If asked which race most identifies with the druid class for example, I’m willing to bet an enormous majority of the playerbase would still say night elves/tauren almost two decades later.
I find it stranger you think racial identity is totally exclusive & unrelated to playable classes.
I would say this as well. I just don’t see deviations that are treated as deviations as a threat to the identity. And I don’t see why anyone would.
Troll Druids, Kul Tiran Druids, and Gilnean Druids haven’t changed my answer to that question, even though they are playable.
Well personally I’m of the opinion that certain race/class combinations would damage the identity of Warcraft as a whole. Though I’m sure people will welcome gnome techno-druids with open arms.
Because it’s one of the many ways Blizz is chipping away the unique identity of the various races. A well beaten horse in this regard is how Blizz butchered the Blood Knights. While adding things that make the whole thing more of an avatar creation than a character creation, which i believe is in fundamental conflict with the whole RPG thing.
PS: I believe that all Order Halls besides Warlocks, DKs and Demon Hunters were a massive mistake to begin with and the less we see of them the better.
I agree that they are chipping away on multiple fronts. And I agree that Blizzard shares your believe that class combinations say something about the races’ lore, so in fact, they are diluting racial identity. I believe they are following the same fallacious logic as some people here, and think that if they want to allow the gameplay options they want to allow, they have to bend the lore to suit it. That’s why I’ll agree that class combinations will sooner or later be a lore disaster. If not with Tauren rogues, there are certainly worse candidates they can comment on, an ruin in the process.
I just think that all of this doesn’t follow at all. They could easily introduce the class combinations without ruining anything, or changing the lore of any race. Like it our not, Blizzard went with the idea of the player hero being explicitly exceptional. So allowing certain class combinations to them should actually never be seen as making these typical. You could easily explain why the player hero could have aquired a set of skills which is otherwise unusual for their people. I mentioned the class orders, because they are already established, but if they weren’t there, it still would be easy enough to have singular trainers that don’t judge you by your horns or head size, but by the requirements of the training they are willing to give. The Silver Hand wouldn’t train an Orc to be a Paladin? Well, given the right Orc, Tirion would have, and so would his disciples. And to make it felt how strange that is, you could easily introduce dialogue that comments on how uncommon class combination is, for example when talking to class trainers.
That the class combinations are a part of a process that’s ruining the game might be true. But I strongly feel that the devs are making logical mistakes, and threads like these are highliting the same mistakes, and thus affirming the devs’s position. If you tell the devs, that they’ll have to bend the lore to get the features they like into the game, you won’t stop them from introducing those features, you’re just telling them to bend the lore.
It becomes a problem, when the class’s nature is contradictory with the race in question. ie. a sneaky 10ft tall hulking bull monster. Or the void infused elves, who can’t even touch a light infused thing without being ragdolled across the room by an explosion.
Overall i fear this game is degenerating into an eastern avatar making gridnfest mmo, where we’re only a couple steps away from cyberpunk catgirls riding around cash shop models of real life cars, with no rhyme or reason.
Looking at the outlaw rogue, that’s not the class fantasy I see, though. The swashbuckler might have access to stealth, but it’s hardly its defining feature. And looking most prominently at priests we have pretty much always accepted that not all specs must fit all races that can play the calss. Not to mention that stealth isn’t just being sneaky in WoW, but some form of actual magical effect. I see litte reason to think that this shadowy magic would necessarily be beyond Tauren.
No. There isn’t.
Yea there is. There was an old human joke about taurens painting their hooves red to disguise themselves as cherry trees.
Ergo, tauren rogues.
Btw. here another tidbit on this from a Blizzard interview:
So… yeah, they thought Tauren rogues didn’t need new lore, but are intent on adding lore with more controversial combos. Jay… 
I think that it is better if players are forced to adapt to the rules set by the world building rather than the world adapt to the infinite whims of the players. I am very much against the notion that “players make the impossible possible”.
It is neat when there exists lore for why a race might be a certain class. Take a subfaction like the Far Striders; if you play a Blood Elf hunter or rogue you have a neat piece of world building you can utilize when coming up with a background story for your character. If you want to play a Blood Elf Druid, well, then it doesn’t really matter how good a background story you can conjure up because that combination of race + class is far too rare, and any edge cases should be left to the domain of the NPCs.
Me too. But “players can represent the extraordinary”, while the rest of the game represents what’s common, seems much more fitting to me. There is nothing “impossible” about any class combination.
Edit:
That’s also not dependent on player power level. The “adventurer” is someone who lives on the edge, sticking their neck where no reasonable person would stick it, and taking risks any common person wouldn’t be willing to take. While they can certainly have a “common” background, being exceptional and strange makes a lot of sense for the role. Outsiders who stray from the norm, and can thus pick up skills that usual members of their race don’t.
The players should become extraordinary through their in game accomplishments not start out already exceptional. God knows we’ve seen too many of such flatlines in cinema already.
So we shouldn’t start as mages and paladins, but as farm laborers and merchants? Nah. We’re just discussing where to draw the line, no one is really arguing to draw it at “ordinary”.
I’ve not said you need to be a farmer, however your starting point is say a recruit to the order, who has only really undergone basic training. The key here is setting a precedent for the player to follow and eventually outgrow. You shouldn’t start as the exceptional, unprecedented, superspecial, chosen one, one of a kind star child. Obviously.
Delete Tauren rogues.
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