All Races, All Classes

Community General Discussion
104

In addition to the above, it’s only recently that the bulk of those combinations became “viable.” Unless you were playing an incredibly niche build, making a “non-traditional” combination generally came with some pretty severe penalties as you would have little-to-no synergy with your racial/class abilities and your stats would be completely out of whack. At the very least, you are ignoring your strengths (like my Dragonborn Druid), and at worst, you are actively hindered by your weaknesses.

If WoW was built similarly and we’d have Blood Elves betraying their inherently magical nature as Warriors and hitting like wet noodles, or Orcs exploding themselves in Dalaran’s Magic Academy while learning about the Arcane, I’d be all for opening up availability to everything. Those are impactful choices. Flavourful. They’re not viable, but they’re impactful.

When a Gnome is just as viable as a Tauren as a Warrior? Should Gnome Warriors actually become more prevalent than Tauren Warriors? Your racial choice becomes meaningless and the identities of those two races are damaged.

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Races in games should be cosmetic only. Most games now it’s this way. There is no good reason to limit player choice and for many players aesthetics matter a lot. As for WoW lore, they’ve butchered it so many times and recently again with centaur lore. Their lore doesn’t matter anymore and shouldn’t be used to limit race/class combinations. It’s past time to open it up.

106

While custom new leveling experiences for new race/class combos would be swell, there’s little about them that couldn’t just be plopped into the Exiles Reach Starting Experience.

A Night Elf can be a Warlock, the problem is that they would most likely being ostracized by their people. Maybe having that being reflected in the world with some flavor text or interactions would be the way to go. Maybe it would lead to them being more tightly related to Demon Hunters.

Class Orders could be an interesting way to explain the occurrence of new class combos that would feel culturally anathema to certain races. Active recruitment of individuals in major cities, with the offer of protection from harassment from their racial peers.

IDK, with how trends have advanced, and how Azeroth itself has advanced in universe, the idea of strict class/race limitations makes less and less sense. The only real issues would be for races and classes who’s very nature can be considered contrary to each other, like undead and void elves being paladins, which could be resolved by either introducing a lore analogue to paladin that uses Void, or use the very same exciting lore of Twilight Vindicators and make them wield Twilight magic in order to use Light.

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[quote=“Blastkrizzle-moon-guard, post:103, topic:810094”]
This is true but usual tabletop/p&p RPGs don’t have much lore behind in the game master’s game. It’s a vehicle to have some serious or wacky adventures where the characters shine rather the culture or story.[/quote]

Try Pathfinder sometime; Pathfinder has entire books on each of its ancestries AND it doesn’t do ancestry locking. Just because Wizards of the Coast only put out a handful of sourcebooks every year and make the GM do all the work prepping doesn’t mean all tabletop RPGs do!

WoW is more build around the having “all” of it, where your character gets to life through questlines. Making every class available takes away some of the magic (Human/Blood Elf druids, Void Paladin Elves, …)

I actually don’t know what you’re trying to say here, but the implication I’m getting is that you think that WoW’s setting is better fleshed-out than, say, D&D’s. I respectfully disagree; we don’t even know the typical lifespan of any of Warcraft’s species. Pathfinder not withstanding, D&D’s races are better fleshed out than WoW’s, if only for that reason. And honestly, picking human and blood elf druids really isn’t a great example here. There’s nothing in the lore that states that you need to be part of the Cenarion Circle to be a druid, and there’s nothing in the lore that states that Night Elves or Tauren couldn’t teach the other races to do it. An artificial, fake world needs a reason for cultural exchange to occur. In the real world, it just happens.

The bigger issue is that in World of Warcraft, player characters are essentially D&D NPCs; they follow so-called norms rather than being allowed to be individuals. In D&D, your character can be whatever you want because you are an individual and the game setting should not dictate your life story for you.

If they can explain it in the story, then I don’t see an issue. But I’m not really a fan of giving humans and belves everything because they are already the most-played race(s).

I also don’t think “Blood Elves and Humans are the most played races” is a good reason to keep racial restrictions on classes. Again, who cares? Let players play what they want and let the game world’s NPCs reflect what the world is like, not the players.

If Blizzard wants more characters than just humans and blood elves to be played by the player base, the big thing they need to do is make sure that more of the story centers around other races. Because right now, everything is elf city. (Aside, humans are always going to favor playing humans. It’s comfy. Let them do it if they want to. It’s fine.)

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108

I can only imagine how many dime a dozen cali girl blood elves will be druids 🫠

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109

Isn’t there a cinematic in Legion explaining why only (initially only night elves) elves became DHs?

A whole thing about the night elf empire dominating the entirety of Azeroth during the first coming of the burning legion and elves seeking power at whatever cost due to the atrocities they’ve witnessed, often already losing everything prior to corrupting themselves with fel magic.

Might be nice for all races to be able to become DHs, but it won’t carry the same weight. Also Illidan has been gone since the conclusion of Legion.

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I have played several stories in Pathfinder 1E and 2E for a while with my relatives, I’m aware of them.

The very same argument was brought up with the faction imbalance and why should you “care” - and in the end, it devoured the Alliance so much. With the death of race diversity and the current human potential races, it might become the most played race down the line, especially when it comes to druids. And Blood Elves will be played because they look simply better.

Mark my words, it will cause problems down the line. Either you push the other races before everything becomes available to humans or belves or we all face the consequences.

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Yes. Essentially Illidan says that “Only elves are nimble enough to do this.”

Aka he’s an elf supremacist.

112

His statement make hilariously ridiculous by the murlock daemon hunter we met in one of the world quests.

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I’m going to enjoy all the whining that will happen when I come rolling into 10.0 as a Tauren Rogue and Highmountain Mage.

I look forward to the day I can reroll my Nightborne into a Shaman. Nothing says a Nightborne can’t travel to Orgrimmar or Thunder Bluff and say - “Hey, that shamanism is pretty cool. Can you teach me?”

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114

I’m once again, giving my support for all races all classes.

Draenei bis

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115

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Personally, I think all races should be all classes, we are playing a mmorpg, Let me pick my race and class and fully immerse myself, let’s be real, aesthetics is everything, nearly everyone I know has a favourite race and class and honestly sometimes they don’t match up… for example Night Elf Paladins.

Everyones counter argument is that certain races will be dominant but isn’t that how it is now?, I don’t see any difference happening if all classes opened up to all races.

Heck I know so many people who went to other certain MMOs purely cause they can be a race and class they love, or another mmo that lets them have every class available and they seem to be doing well.

So I’m a huge advocate of let the players choose there own race + class, let the player be happy and excited to be what they like. If I want to be a Goblin Druid that decided to follow the teachings of the Cenarius, why can’t I?.

Those players who are like “ohh but lore”, lore is forever changing, each expansion release/patch continuously changes lore it’s forever changing moving forward.

The story of today is the lore of tomorrow, change is inevitable, lore is forever being written.

What’s a huge kick in the teeth is that we continuously see NPCs friends and foes that are race+class combinations that arnt available to the player…

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117

Never understood the backlash to Tauren Rogues given how Taunen Hunters have been able to use Camouflage for years. And given that Tauren have been depicted as pirates before, it’s only natural to assume they can be Rogues.

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118

Not to mention Cairne and Baine both have a squad of agents (the Longwalkers) who sneak around gathering information, delivering secret messages, and protecting their High Chieftain.

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119

It will be even more obvious when everyone changes to a human and blood elf druid.

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More obvious to already obvious seems like a small downside to increase player enjoyment… they already are the most popular Races, but I beg to differ on Blood Elves, with Alliance having Void Elves and customisation to basically look like a Blood Elf might actually help bring Alliance faction up in numbers.

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121

That’s fine. Just means things that would generally be taboo will likely be unpopular and uncommon to see throughout the world :dracthyr_lulmao:

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122

Is there a reason that’d be a popular combo?

If I could play it, my druid would race change into a night elven worgen in a heart beat.
All wolf based druid forms. Should be an option.

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I will never not abhor the idea of void elves gaining access to paladins, shaman, druids, and demon hunters, but the tradeoff would be that all the worst nelf, belf, and orc players would race change to them overnight if they haven’t done so already. Whether that would be a good or bad thing is a matter of interpretation.