Back when I started in TBC, this character was a troll. And you wouldn’t believe how often I’d get people saying “trolls can be mages?” when I ended up in a group. Same with my priest alt. Even got it on my shaman once, which prompted me to ask “what classes did you think trolls had access to?” and the person could only think of warriors, hunters, and rogues.
To me, that sent a far stronger message that some races had little identity in the first place, before you brought classes into the picture. Sure, I remember the backstory for the troll mage option being “trolls wanted to learn about the magic that destroyed their empire” but it never advanced beyond that - probably in part because of the fact that they were originally supposed to launch with warlocks instead of mages, coupled with the lack of dev interest in developing recurring troll characters and areas beyond “outpost” and “baddies you kill”. They had a stronger druid connection through the Gurubashi than they did mages.
Nor did it help that that one sentence of racial class lore was subsumed by the Kirin Tor as soon as WotLK first brought it back into relevance. On top of that, magecraft in general was already being redefined away from “mysterious wielder of the unknown” to the magic equivalent of receiving higher education. We also saw paladins, for what few options they had, already grouping together under a singular Argent Crusade grouping at the same time.
People are quick to blame the opening of race/class combos as the reason class lore is watered down, but that was happening first. If anything, druids and nature are patient 0 of this issue for being so tied to the hip of night elves that any race deviating from a single race’s stance apparently makes them unworthy of any consideration.
At least now I get to play my favorite class with my favorite playable race. The amount of “quality lore” backing him up never really changed.
“Fantasy needs to be grounded. It is not simply a license to do anything you like. Smaug and Toothless may both be dragons, but they should never be confused. Ignore canon, and the world you’ve created comes apart like tissue paper.”
im not reading all of that crap but you fail to realize some things which should be obvious:
races are not monolithic. cultures are not monolithic. you are allowed to go beyond what is considered traditional for your culture or race. where you are born and what ethnicity you are does not dictate your path in life, unless you choose for it to.
While you raise some well written points, I don’t agree. We can look at Draenei Shaman which you have written positively as a means for the race to find connection to the elements, even though the Draenei are historically an arcane and later light worshipping technological race of space nomads. Even though I like Draenei Shamans, the explanation of them as the Broken losing their connection to the light and opening to the elements of Draenor was just an explanation the writers cooked up to justify a Shaman race for the Alliance.
When it comes to race-class combinations, I think only physical or chronological limitations are sensible reasons for restricting a class, e.g. you can’t have an Earthen DK since the Lich King no longer exists and they’re robots anyway or DHs only being elves since Illidan was a racist.
Even when a class seemingly doesn’t fit a race, there can be exceptions of individuals who break from tradition. No society is monolithic. What of Sir Zeliek, whose faith was so strong he could not be separated from the light even in undeath? What’s stopping a Tauren outcast from embracing dark magic like the Feltotem did?
I think what’s really missing is the lack of racial flavour beyond a handful of NPCs meant to represent them on their addition. A Night Elf Paladin or Priest should be using the light of Elune. A Worgen Druid could have the option to use their worgen form for cat. Tauren Paladins should have more orange tint to their spells and different graphics.
I get that you want to spare “immersion” in this game, but aside from a few random open world roleplay moments on the more serious realms, I can assure you that immersion is dead, and the Lich King died with it
Honestly, instead of this thread, you could have had ChatGPT generate all the counterpoints you could have wanted and then argued with that.
But, no. Most race-class restrictions are arbitrary and remnents of outdated systems. Toss 'em. It’s also very, well, racist thinking to assume that a person couldn’t possibly have an interest outside of their cultural norms, solely due to their race. Plus it’s a fictional universe with constantly evolving lore. If the crappy bits of the story is getting in the way of a good gameplay experience, then write a better story. Blizz has that power.
And we learned in The Burning Crusade that the normal “Light” is granted by the Naaru. But wait, there’s no Naaru anywhere near us in classic… how are the humans and dwarfs getting there? The classic lore of paladins creates a paradox where in what is required of them to be a paladin doesn’t align with the time line of occurrences, so the way a race achieves “Paladin” was altered to be a heavy belief and worship into something “light based”. They are religious zealots.
The Tauren’s worship An’she (the sun) and through that faith they have achieved “The Light”. Zandalari achieved it from worshipping a golden devilsaur loa they deemed the king of all loa. Dark Iron’s got it from their faith (enslavement) to Ragnaros. Arathi are paladins because of their faith in the Sacred Flame.
If you want to see the greatest race of paladins on Azeroth… it’s the Kobolds. Their faith in Candle is undeniable. Their resolve, unshakable. They will die before they let you take Candle!
Warlocks and Death Knights on the Alliance doesn’t make sense either but classes have to be available for both factions. I would say the major problem is actually tying the player’s character with a faction but that’s a different story.
This is the point where it was apparent you have no understanding of the lore that you are talking about, which is impressive since it is literally the first sentence where you made a claim.
who have established paladins in lore.
has been in the game since Vanilla.
It’s amusing you straight-up do not understand the lore you want to talk about.
They do not by any stretch, you don’t actually try to establish how though so I’ll just settle for pointing out that your claims are so baseless you didn’t even try to support them.
It is, ultimately.
Undead druids already exist in the lore, and there’s nothing stating that you need an ancestral connection to druidism to be a druid. Troll druids, for instance, have demonstrated no special connection to the Emerald Dream that another individual couldn’t have.
You don’t understand the lore of the setting yet want to argue it.
This hasn’t been the case since… Uhh… Molten core is when this was last accurate honestly. The moment we were facing off with Ragnaros and Nefarion, then Illidan and the Lich King? That ship had sailed.
Not really. We did all of that as faceless representatives of our faction. Chronicles even makes that clearer when it reports on “Horde forces beat X” or “Alliance forces took down Y”.
Another thing that stands out to me is that shaman is held up as an example of reverence to the elements and spirits, which is true, but the reason why those are grouped together in the first place is because WoW shaman is the conglomeration of three racial skill sets in the first place - orc shamans, troll shadowhunters, and tauren spiritwalkers.
As for the term “tribal” which is being ascribed to shamanism (and I think WoW itself and lots of fantasy does this so I’m not trying to accuse Zatrazane of anything here), I think it’s worth considering how the term’s actually being used. Tribe and clan are pretty much interchangeable, both meaning communities made up of multiple families or kin; the Bronzebeards are a tribe, for example. But often it’s used as a synonym for “primitive”. So while orcs/trolls/tauren all started out with the shaman class, grouping them under the umbrella term of “tribal” instead of exploring the cultures individually (as well as how they interact) is exactly the kind of watering down of lore that people think expanding race/class options do.
That’s an inherent limitation of an MMO. They cannot acknowledge every player character as the Champion of Azeroth who felled N’zoth or led their order hall into Antorus. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t place us into those roles, complete with multiple flashback scenes to our character from an NPC’s perspective.
