You know why i’m not a fan of druids in WoW adn DnD?
Because in these games (and probably others), the game designers have reduces the mighty druid to a shapeshifting toggle mechanic.
It’s not mystical, …its functional.
You press a button, get new stats, and suddenly you can talk and cast spells as a cat, bird…or whatever form. And it’s fine for gameplay…but it has nothing to do with the actual druid fantasy.
There’s a difference between “playing as an animal” and “channeling nature’s fury through an animal’s spirit”.
So yeah…druids in WoW and DnD are glorified shapeshifters …“you turn into a bear, now you’re just a bear with spell slots.” …its bs!
I think the best game that represents what Druids actually are is Diablo 4.
The shapeshift isn’t a costume you put on and stay in that form as long as you like.
It’s an eruption of nature’s will through the human vessel.
When you shift into a werebear or werewolf it’s not cute, …it’s violent.
It’s primal energy spilling through human frame that wasn’t made to contain it.
The skin stretches, the bones crack, the roar is primordial. That’s the spirit of the beast …not pretending to be a beast.
And that subtle difference, that liminal space between man and nature is EXACTLY where the druid fantasy lives and should …not just in Diablo4 but in WoW as well!
Yes, this is what happens when you make classes for a fantasy game. You need to limit the powers of characters so that they are grounded in the world.
You are playing as an adventuring druid, not the archdruid Malfurion.
Same reason that rogues are not going around one shotting every breathing person.
Same reason death knights are not commanding the whole might of the scourge.
Same reason shamans are not commanding the full might of the elements and breaking the planet apart.
Same reason mages are not freezing time and breaking the very fabric of reality.
Every class’s fantasy can be scaled to be godlike. The thing is that our characters are just adventurers in a fantasy world with way bigger fishes than us.
To be honest if Druids were to be “genuine” as they were in reality they would never be in games as the outrage would be astronomical and not just from overzealous Christian fundamentalists.
Just put it down to typical American ignorance of any culture outside of anything from the US that doesn’t involve military terms, baseball or NASCAR.
And as a Diablo 4 player…
Druids are a bore. If you’re not a Pulverize Werebear with the two uniques that give the permanent bear form and the poison puddle to Pulverize don’t even bother.
This used to be the case in Classic maybe, not in the current state of the story. When we’ve taken out threats like Sargeras, all Old Gods and the Jailer.
Lorewise, player characters are the most powerful beings in the universe and the reason we haven’t enslaved the world with the snap of our fingers is because no quest told us so.
But anyway, what bugs me about the potrayal of druids is how casually shapeshifting is treated. If we exclude coerced shapesihfting via a curse, willful shapeshifting is an incredibly difficult process - You have to rearrange your bones, muscles, veins, organs, your brain.
You’d have to have an expert knowlegde of the anatomy of the animal you want to shapeshift into since a tiny mistake could result in dysfunctional limbs, organs, clogged veins or, you know, disfigured brain that would render you unable to shapeshift back if it didn’t kill you outright.
If there were an order of shapeshifting spellcasters, they would probably perform only partial shapeshifting of their body and transformation of the head would be strictly prohibited.
I never liked this . In classic this was dealt in a very simple and realistic way . The player character wasn’t the all mighty hero . They were a soldier . A part of the mass .
In the real world soldiers take over a city . They win the world wars , but you don’t remember the Joe Freeman that was part of brigade 319 and liberated Parris .
You remember the generals and the leaders that lead the sieges .
That’s who the player character was > one Solder , which was part of raid group doing something along side thousands of other groups . It fit lore and it was realistic .
Now we are THE GENERAL . THE LEADER . THE ONE .
But how can THE ONE be the THE ONE , when there’s 6 million more just like him ?! Nonsense .
On the druid topic , I kinda agree that they are faaaaar too peaceful .
Doing legion there was one druid there shown as actually aggressive ( In Val’sharah - Thaon Moonclaw ) and he gets killed pretty much 2 minutes into the quest line .
Everyone else is a hipster smoking weed . Malfurion is to blame with his peace love , whatever . Worgen are much closer to what a real druid should be .
Nah, lorewise our characters are not that much stronger than classic. It is just that the story gets that much grand, and our characters are thrown into impossible situations with help of extradimensional beings.
Power wise, our characters are between regular soldiers and warcraft “heros”. In game lore, we need organized groups of 10-30 heros in order to stand toe to toe with one faction leader/warcraft hero.
Examples are fights with jaina, sylvanas, etc, where you actually have the raid with minimal help fighting against these heroes. For anything bigger in scale, our characters always have a mc guffin or external help to really boost our power or help us in the fight. The fight with dimensius is such an example. We needed help from multiple heroes, and an artifact, just to manage to find a way to contain the creature.
Yeah I do not think that’s how shapeshifting in wow happens.
As a druid you commune with nature and actually try to get the spirits to change your body into such a creature. You are not in control of all the intricacies and work needed to acomplish that, you just ask for the “end result” from the nature spirits. Then, they are in charge of creating and taking care of all that busywork needed in order to change your body.
You can easily see how the druids do not have the knowledge of anatomy, medicine, and biology in order to be able to understand the body of humans and beasts. That knowledge would advance warcraft medicine and technology hundred of years in the future, but this does not happen because “nature magic” takes care of those issues.
