They could be in the future, that isn’t an impossibility. They’ve basically just woken up, after all.
Except that the Celestials are not interested in passing on such power, and the Pandaren are not interested in asking for it since they developed monasticism (monks) instead.
Classes being made available are usually represented by cultural shifts in game.
It affects everyone that plays the game though. It cheapens the lore when you start handing out everything like candy.
Even that has been cheapened now with all the Druid additions they have made by “expanding” the ED to include the loa’s and whatever else the other druid races revere now.
This is exactly why handing out classes willy nilly isn’t a good thing.
It doesn’t affect anyone whatsoever, no matter how much you want to try to argue otherwise. You can simply not use those classes with those races. Nothing is “being handed out.”, people are simply being allowed to play races they enjoy.
Gatekeeping people being able to play characters they like will never not be wrong.
Its not about being right or wrong. It is about what kind of a world do they want to create. They can certainly go the DnD route where every race can be every class and have every background and in the end none of it matters because in a table top game it is the players and the social aspects of the game that matter.
Without that player agency though everything just ends up being a bland nothingness. Without player imagination the difference between DnD elves amounts to what color skin they have. You can have woodsy high elves and wood elves that live in cities and Drow that live above ground. When all the lore restrictions are removed the choice comes down to “do i want my elf to to be blue, bronze, or copper”.
I prefer a world where there is more significant difference between my NE and my BE than what their barber shop options are. And we are losing that with every addition Blizz seems to make.
All Wild Gods are also Loa. Loa was always an ‘encompassing’ term that applied to any being of sufficient power. The ability for Trolls to be druids was hinted at in early Classic via Zul’Gurub, and was reinforced in TBC and WotLK prior to it happening in Cata.
Loa as a term was, as you said, just hinted at prior to Cata. NPC’s have always had access to abilities players don’t though so it wasn’t like it was this breadcrumb they wanted people picking up on. Not to mention Zul’Gurub in vanilla WoW wasn’t something the vast majority of players were ever going to see.
Loa didn’t become a term most WoW players would have even recognized in terms of the lore prior to Trolls getting Druids. And really as an Alliance player it wasn’t something you heard about at all till BFA. So yeah the lore was “expanded” to include that.
And then you have whatever the Kul Tiran’s are doing.
As I’ve said already I’m fine with BE druid or gnome druids or whatever. We crossed the Rubicon of ridiculous lore reasoning a long time ago, so might as well open up the buffet.
It was pretty common to go back to ZG in TBC and WotLk when it became easy to solo.
Loa was a very prominent term in Troll starting areas, which meant it wasn’t that obscure. Even I knew of it then and I played almost exclusively alliance.
But it wasn’t in reference to them being Druids. It was just the “gods” that they worshipped.
Edit: If I’m wrong there fine, but I barely remember the troll starting area. Didn’t they start in the Orc starting zone?
The reason they split is because Blood Elves used to be High Elves. Some stayed with the humans, but many were killed during Arthas’s Scourge invasion, and more to some of the racist humans (Garathos).
High elves were the Night Elves that refused, after the War of the Ancients, to stop using Arcane magic. That’s the cause of the Burning Legion (and Azshara being thirsty for power) invading as Azshara and her highborn opened portals for the demons after attracting them with arcane magic.
That’s the cut down version. Highly summerized.
But that also points out why Blood Elves aren’t in tune for druids. They are very attached to the arcane, it’s basically their heritage and what they were thrown out of the night elf society for. They were also never that close to nature. If they could break it down for arcane power, not only would they, but they did it. Arcane worm? Eat it. Anything with arcane? Essentially magic? Eat it. Nature itself would not allow them to be druids, even though they only recently cured the addiction. It will take nature a while before they are forgiven.
Also daddy Blizzard my wanting to give druids out to everyone yet.
Depends when you started. Either during Cata or Pandaria, they started in the Echo Isles. They got a revamped starting zone for themselves, like the undead got their starting zone redone.
People keep describing Night Elf Druids and saying that Blood Elves can’t be that. That’s kind of the point we are saying they should have a different style/form of Druidism.
Otherwise how exactly are Sin’Dorei supposed to heal the dead scar?
It wasn’t because there’s no lore. It was because they just didn’t have the time to make those assets. Druids require a decent amount.
It could also be because Dracthyr can already fly. How/why does a dragonkin with wings to fly turn into a bird to fly a slightly different way?
The Celestials haven’t been to the Dream in thousands of years. They probably didn’t have an open mind enough to figure out that a bear doesn’t need to turn into a bear and that they could figure out how to make an ox using the bear rig.
But some of the other forms are problematic. Like Moonkin, which doesn’t exist.
Sure. They did it with Lightforged Warlocks using, “Because we felt like it.” Such lore, much sense.
Blizz doesn’t much care anymore.
I don’t think the style of blood elf fits as a Druid, Druids are nature loving forest ppl, blood elf likes luxury, soft pillows, jewelries etc etc
Well blood elves do HAVE an established respect for nature its just much more…generic fantasy elves that live in the woods than druidism, the reason they cant be druids is because night elf society didnt turn towards druidism until after arcane was banned and theyve never really had a reason to learn druidism
Ya know this would make a lot of sense.
This is exactly correct. Maybe not the time but if TWW release was any indication they dont exactly have a ton of time, and theyve gone on record saying druid is the lowest priority class to give out at any time because it takes by far the most work.
Tho the one im really upset they didnt get is shaman.
I don’t think it fits Kul Tirans to be Druids…they are fat pot belly pirates who drink beer…
they are cursed, look at their ugly druid forms.
This reply-chain began @ you suggesting the Nightelves became what they were via the Moonwells …
Regardless, majority of what their magical affinities & civilization course had taken anyway was in correlation to the Well of Eternity, not the Moonwells & nature magic — which is why much of their civilization was heavily magic-based & steeped in arcane knowledge (take Suramar for example).
Heck, to add on top of that — even according to Tenaron Stormgrip in Aldrassil, the waters of the moonwell is originated from the Well of Eternity. As we saw in the Suramar quests, making a new Moonwell requires the waters of a previously made Moonwell too.
As for Moonwells themselves:
So they’re also used as a boon for their people.
It’s stated that the druids took advantage of the Well of Eternity’s properties with the creation of the Moonwell, and the Sentinels revere the wells as shrines to Elune, and now even the returning Highborne look to the wells longingly (of what once was & the beauty the original well had once held).
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Blood Elves adopted such a creation with their own druids — Creating ‘Star-Wells’ using a vial from the Sunwell and blessed it with the blessings of ancient deities (eg. Amani Loa, An’she or Elune as well) — alongside balancing nature around them at the time of their creation to ensure it’s blessed with longevity.
Yeah NE’s have spent the last 10,000+ years living with and revering the Moonwells. Pretty sure that has had an effect on them. Not sure what your point was there. That any lore can be made up to “justify” BE Druids? I never denied that. Only denied that it would be good lore.