The Wild Gods that have students under the Cenarius Circle do in fact follow Cenarius’ doctrine. They are as much part of the Circle as their students themselves.
Thats wrong: Any Druid who chooses a path follows the teachings of this Wild God, not the teachings of Cenarius. There are only a few - mostly incredibly old - druids who have become druids of the wild, like Malfurion, who somehow already followed and learned from all of them. Even to the point that the aspect of nature says that Malfurion knows more than she does.
But it doesn’t change the fact that the night elves have already used the powers in the past that we see today, except for the gestalt forms, which they have not shown, but the special “areas” of these themes they represent quite with, but they represent them just with, and are not so well known for it, but where the thorn speakers work with runes, thorn spells, barriers, the night elves have also already shown this mastery.
Where the war druids of the Zandalari - apart from their shape seem to be very physically oriented - there was also already this, only in a different druid form.
One should not be distracted by the obvious difference in form, in essence these two new druid forms do nothing so vastly different that the night elves have not already shown.
We have not been shown what you are claiming. Every Druid we have seen study under a Cenarion Wild God - be they examples like Koda Steelclaw studying under Ursoc or Thisalee Crow’s reverence to Aviana - ultimately follows under the Cenarion’s ways, and answers to Malfurion accordingly. There is no substantial difference between various Cenarion Druids beyond preference to a form or personal attachment to a particular Wild God, but doesn’t actually affect what they know of nature.
Having multiple forms is also not necessarily that special, as we saw Druids beyond Malfurion take multiple forms during the War of the Thorns, and Ferryn even in-game in the Night Fae covenant routinely shapeshifts from Bear Form to Cat Form to Night Elf form on whim.
What? have you ever played cata Hyjal? What are you mean with “Ways”?
If you mean that they follow Cenarius’ example, in the sense that they teach mortals their lessons and experiences to bless them and also teach them the natural power that they themselves embody, as Cenarius did before, then I agree with you.
If you think they all learn the same thing and all have the same focus, then I disagree with you, so what do you mean by “Ways”?
Mount Hyjal and the Guardians/Avengers of Hyjal are my example. In practice they all studied the same things as far as nature goes, being connections to the Emerald Dream and proliferation of new life, and are unified as such. That they studied to take the shape of a bird or bear or stag is considerably secondary to that, and has no practical impact to their knowledge of nature studies.
Then you haven’t been paying attention.
Yes, what you have described matches this certain points, but what about the things that differ? For example, the druids of Talon have a focus on storm magic and wind. Their learning is very specialized in that, and also the point of flying creatures is strongly symbolized there.
Another example are the Druids of the Claws, they have more to do with the earth, are very focused on protecting, on top of that they are very specialized in preserving, in their teachings it is mainly about preserving sanctuaries and places, they are also partly guardians of the dream, as Ursoc and Ursol exemplified to them, especially the sacrifice of the Bear Brothers is strongly connected in their teachings.
There are things that coincide, but the focuses and specializations of the Wild Gods and especially their embodiment in nature is just as strongly connected. In Hyjal, each Wild God is there for something different, and embodies different aspects. E.g.: the focus on restoration of forests of Aessina
Each Wild God represents a different aspect of nature, they all embody different things and each has a different focus. This is also reflected in their teachings, which is exactly why the Circle of Cenarius was founded, the teachings are not suppressed, the diversity of teachings is only collected and tried to bring together.
“The Cenarion Circle is a harmonious order that guides and keeps watch over the world’s druids and their practices”.
Which is my point. Their teachings are shared, and their goals are ultimately the same. Druids of the Talon focus on preservation same as the Druids of the Claw. That they specialize in what they can help preserve is just a matter of practicality, not a difference in their Druidic ways.
That’s just not true, they learn different things, they specialize in different things, the only exceptions are Druids of the Wild.
A Druid of the Antler is a master healer, they specialize in that, their path of Druidism is also focused on that. Which we also witnessed in Legion, whereas Druids of the Claws have other focuses.
The knowledge is collected and tried to be preserved, but it does not change the fact that there is no preferred direction for a teaching, for a Wild God, every Druid learns from his Wild God the things that this Wild God is able to teach him, not every Wild God has the same knowledge or the same “Theme”, and the things you list are part of the one time one of the Druid, yes, but those are the things that every DRUID must be able to do to become a Druid, everything else when it comes to the specific Patron starts to differ.
This does not mean that all Druids stay with one Wild God, as I said, there is no rule that forbids a Druid to change Patrons and continue their learning, see Malfurion, he is the best example, but, in different times he learned from different wild gods different things to became the druid of the wild, the archdruid, a master of all ways.
Capability and preference have no baring on the Druids’ duties to nature itself. It’s just a matter of what fits a person best. Take Zen’kiki for example. He tried out various forms, from Aquatic Form, Cat Form, Bear Form, to Moonkin Form, and none of them fit him, as ultimately what he found the most skill in was Restoration magic. None of that changed his dedication to aiding the balance of life in nature.
Likewise, larger practices between even the Druids of the Talon and Druids of the Claw are not different. For example, both promote the growth of Great Trees from G’Hanir’s seeds to remove or prevent corruption from lands, be they the Druid of the Claw and Voldrassil or the Druids of the Talon and Nordrassil.
Balance is the goal, yes, but there are many paths to reach the goal. IT, does not mean that each WAY is the same, only the goal is the same. And we have seen that things have fundamental differences, there are different focus areas, and especially the focus of learning revolves around other topics, but all built around the word “balance”.
There is not one solution to create balance, otherwise it would only need a single Wild God, balance is a complex issue and creating it is not easy, we have seen this several times ingame. There are many ways to reach the goal and not even every one of them is particularly good.
Balance ultimately just means finding the maximum sustainability of an ecosystem. Be it Druids of the Talon clearing out Harpies that have over-proliferated so other birds may thrive as well, or Druids of the Claw culling land predators so they don’t over eat herbivores or culling herbivores so they don’t over eat plant life and all ultimately starve, it is all the same practice.
An easy task in theory, but not in practice.
the same goal, not the same practice, and not the same teaching, how many times?
Objective: to create/maintain balance.
Druid of the Talon: "I try to communicate with harpies, if not kill them, weaken the freezing wind in this land - which shouldn’t be here because it’s somehow cursed or something - by using the dream to restore nature here, and finally end the eternal storm in the mountains.
Druid of the Claw: Kill Predators when there are too many in relation to the wildlife, but also nourish the cycle, ergo preserve the system of flora in its most basic form, it is not a balance at a ratio of 50/50 of both, since a Predator can in theory kill N wildlife, so to establish the balance is again trickier to achieve and literally on a knife edge.
this above is the practice, the thing you litteraly have to do to reach your certain goal…and its not the same, its differently, even differently tasks, the only one thing both have in common is the goal to create balance.
Unless we’re to believe the Forsaken are still trying to invade Gilneas and Arathi or that Frostwolves are skirmishing with the corpses of the Stormpike
There’s a linked post in the tie-in lore. Gilneas I think should be clarified to be nearer to the border with Silverpine, but I’d absolutely want fighting to keep going in those areas, and I think that the status of the Arathi Highlands was wrongly decided, and should be reopened.
@ Amadis
As to your other point, there are likely significantly more players who enjoy PvP but do not care about lore who would likewise say that if you like lore you can do something other than PvP. Dismissing people with saying they have other options rather precludes discussion, it does not encourage it.
Regarding the first point - sorry for missing what you had said. Adding voice-over work is one technique, but I am going to have to disagree with the idea of disconnecting it from current lore.
As for the quoted piece, I said what I did here because the model I am presenting is one that has the faction war as an option, one among others, with said option supporting PVP content and giving more life to the existing battlegrounds. The principal objection I am running into comes from people who simply do not want to participate in the faction war again, which under the model being considered - they do not have to. These are intentionally limited conflicts that the player can ignore. (Moving away from the BFA model of forcing you to care and making these conflicts so big and so visceral that they say immense and irreversible things about the participants.)
To approach that situation and say “well I don’t like this because I don’t want to participate” is in my opinion unfair. I don’t like PVE - should I have veto power over what goes in raids? Should I be able to walk into a thread about tie-in lore for a raid and say “you know, most PVErs don’t really care about lore. Just throw it in Chromie time or say it’s not canon - who cares?”
I think what I’m seeing is an attitude where people figure that a thing isn’t important if they personally aren’t invested in it - kind of like how a lot of Horde players really don’t care that the Night Elf experience is abysmal so long as they get the content they want (and yes, before someone mentions - that does cut in both directions) - and I find that to be far more dismissive, and precluding of discussion than the elevation of a model where different people have options.
The proposal you shared from Matomi would not be a limited conflict that the rest of the story would ignore. It would be standard full on war again. It would not reasonably be limited to a single Battleground.
Which would be fair enough if your suggestion to effectively disconnect PVP from the current lore or put it in Chromie time was limited to that.
Edit: I am also going to get this out before it becomes a point of argument. You can have a full on war taking place without it being something that forces everyone to participate in it. We need to stop anchoring our suggestions to the model that BFA presented, and consider other possibilities - such as, again, having that conflict at established conflict points, and providing options to do other content in other parts of the world.
Depends on what you mean by optional. The various Chromie times are optional content. The proposal you shared from Matomi would not likely be optional content, as it would likely require painting the entirety of the expansion in the vein of a faction war again to facilitate the content being made for a Battleground. If anything, much like Pandaria’s Battlegrounds were required for the Pandaria Legendary Cloak storyline, if such efforts were put into Warsong Gulch it would lead to Blizzard making such content not optional in practice.
You’re going to have to explain how. Why does creating content around the battleground necessarily mean that everyone is going to be forced to participate in it?
In the case of the Legendary Cloak, Blizzard chose to inject those requirements into a PVE-focused objective having more to do with raids and PVE gear than anything remotely concerned with PVP. What about the creation of those battlegrounds, or this scenario, made that an inevitable, and unavoidable outcome?
Blizzard wanted more people trying the Battlegrounds out. It was likely a general thought of “If everyone gives it a try, maybe some people will find they like it and some will do more of it.” Blizzard applies this to the majority of the content they make. Likewise they current tie unrated PvP ilevels to the PvE covenant contents.
The more efforts Blizzard puts into a section of the game the more Blizzard will want higher percentages of the player base doing them, and tends to impliment incentive or requirement accordingly.
Prove to me that such a route is necessary though - because again, I have specifically disclaimed the taking of that “force them to try it” route. If you are going to try to hold my suggestions to that anyway, then you need to demonstrate to me why such a route is unavoidable, as opposed to something that you feel is within Blizzard’s current preferences.
Oh, I can only speak on what is likely within Blizzard’s current preferences on development efforts vs. player engagement returns. If discussion here requires not factoring that in, then that was a misstep in bringing up something you didn’t want to talk about.
Hopefully more in lines of what you want to talk about, the outlines you have presented so far do not suggest optional relevance to what an expansion’s story would be. Or, at the very least, what you have proposed puts others in the same situation as you found yourself in during Cataclysm, wondering why the faction war was being ignored in the rest of the story.