Part of me will love the customization. The rest of me is kinda disappointed that we didn’t get playable Man’ari eredar for the Horde during BfA where it could’ve made some (a little bit) of sense.
I know. But at this point, any Eredar who practices fel magic is Man’ari. Looking for an Eredar who practices fel magic who’s not Man’ari is like looking for an eggless omelet.
Like I said, it could be done. It would be an interesting plot point if the Eredar were freaking out now that the Legion has fallen and went straight to the Alliance for help.
I wouldn’t call the Draenei and the LFD getting Warlocks lore breaking at all, after all their whole culture has been around for 25,000 years. That is a lot of history to go through. if you look at. Most players and people who are complaining forget that the both cultures are Eredar, just their racial names means exiled ones in their language but are still Eredar.
We do know the Eredar before Sagaeras studied magic which could have included the study of Fel magics. Why wouldn’t they as if you played the game noticed the story of their past in Legion how accepting some were to the changes compared to the orcs who first dabbled in Fel magics.
As one poster said, some of those who studied it but didn’t join the Legion could have left with Velen knowing what the Fel was or could do but hidden in secret or looked on with closed eyes for all that time. Even since TBC there could be a group dedicated to study the Fel and Demons which in the Exador you actually see a area showing them the various demons and what they were once before they became demons. You don’t have that kind of details unless you have studied in Demonology and the Fel in some way.
The Lore isn’t out the window, you can look at how things are in the game, take a moment to say you know what, yes it can work.
1 Like
Don’t compare the human/orcs with the Draenei. They have consistently fought the Burning Legion for less than a hundred years.
The Draenei lost everything to the Burning Legion and have fought them for 10,000+ years. Especially the Lightforged that never got a chance to take a breather.
That’s what’s called a retcon.
Bruh, who cares, let the shiny space goats be warlocks. pick a different hill to die on PLEASE.
also my response to most of these things;
1 Like
Mayla literally offered the Feltotem a place back in Highmountain. They refused.
Broken Draenei have been warlocks since Burning Crusade - one is literally the Warlock Trainer in Shattrath.
It’s not a stretch to believe some non-broken Draenei learned the ways of the Warlock from the Broken. In fact, it’s more difficult to believe not a single one didn’t.
And as we literally see regular Draenei becoming Lightforged in the Lightforged Recruitment quest, logic dictates at least one of those Draenei would go the route of being Lightforged.
You’re telling me, a race that has a predisposition to the fel, NOT A SINGLE ONE has studied the fel in decades?
You’re telling me, that a race that has the Broken version as Warlock Trainers in Shatt, NOT A SINGLE ONE learned the Fel from them in over a decade?
Naw. THAT’S the lore breaking thing to me. Adding Draenei Warlocks rights the lore in my eyes. They should have had Warlocks as an option years ago.
Warlocks are outcasts in their society, Velen doesn’t have to “accept” them - none of the warlocks are accepted by their leaders.
There is easy lore to explain literally every single race as a warlock. Y’all are too stubborn and kept in your ways and refuse to let the lore evolve.
4 Likes
Alright I’ll accept some of those answers.
No, it wasn’t.
This is people today trying to apply real-world politics to a Fantasy game where the conversation is neither relevant nor appropriate.
Races in WoW have NEVER been defined by “their biological physiology”. It has always been by their unique cultures. Their appearances are an extension of that. It’s what makes them all so interesting and distinct.
This isn’t just “one person’s preference”, this is literally a core part of what made Warcraft stand out. WC3 in particular, with its four wildly different factions, each with a wildly different playstyle.
Blizzard obviously couldn’t afford to give each race a completely different set of classes, but it’s clear that they are a loose approximation of “units” from the RTS games. Humans can’t be Druids or Shamans, not because “humans are physically incapable of using nature magic of any kind”, but because those aren’t themes in their culture. It wouldn’t make sense for a player option.
Now, it gets even worse when you consider things like Lightforged Draenei Warlocks, because those things ARE physically incapable of existing. Literally. As in, the Lore strictly cannot allow those two things to work together. So Blizzard isn’t just “evolving” the lore, they’re completely disregarding it.
This would also be the case for Void Elf Paladins, and Undead Paladins.
But even before getting to those literally-impossible combos, the Draenei do not allow Warlocks in their society. Because Warlocks deal with the same demons that have been hunting and killing their people, for tens of thousands of years. Not just “their ancestors”, them. The Draenei are functionally immortal (unless killed), so many if not most of the Draenei were alive on Argus and experienced these events first-hand.
Again, with this change, Blizzard is essentially handwaving away their own lore, reducing the Draenei to little more than “goat people”.
Imagine if WC3 only had one faction, and all the “races” used the exact same units. It wouldn’t have been the same game, the same experience.
2 Likes
Instead what you’re proposing we do is reduce every playable race in this game to stereotypes. Every Tauren is big, spiritual, and physically powerful. Every Orc is borderline raging. Every Gnome speaks in incomprehensible technobabble. Every Dwarf drinks ale. Every Blood Elf is snide. Every Night Elf is mysterious. Every Draenei loves the Light.
There’s no mystery or lore there, it’s just baseline tropes that make every race one-note. Every Tauren comes out of the same barracks with the same backstory and ability. Boring. Dull. Predictable.
Did Thunder Bluff’s culture change because of Tauren being able to become Rogues or Mages, or are they still typically spiritual tribalists that emphasize patience and physical strength? Does the arrival of the Monk class to Worgen suddenly mean they’re balance-focused inward-facing spiritualists focusing on the perfection of mind and body or are they victorian werewolves?
‘Cultural identity’ is a poor shield to try and raise against these ‘lore-breaking’ combinations because cultural identity isn’t impacted by the presence of a single anomaly within it, that anomaly being the PC which, let me remind you, is intentionally kept as blank a slate as possible. So since the PC is barely canon, never gets the credit for the heavy narrative lifting, and is never properly identified, what does it matter what shape it takes?
Thunder Bluff didn’t become Dalaran 2.0 just because a Tauren could attend wizard college, and the Exodar isn’t going to become a Legion stronghold just because a Draenei got desperate enough to choose a pact over dying.
You tell me to imagine if WC3 only had one faction, then have the gall to tell me ‘but every race being one-note is a good thing, really!’
8 Likes
Is it really absurd to think these runaway man’ari would try using the magic of the Legion against them? Specially the Lightforged, who went back to fight them.
Look at a different example. Calia got reanimated and became an undead with the light. It’s necromancy done by the light. There’s nothing stopping other ways of tapping into demonic magic by other means too. You could easily think of a LF using the light to force demons to obey them.
I’d put this in the same category of never should have happened. What is being achieved by mixing schools of magic? When will Warlocks get a specialization to heal using the power of fel?
It’s freaking awesome isn’t it?
1 Like
I think what bothers me more is the fact a Naaru had to die and the fact Calie went Horde, despite everything. But there has been undead mixed with the light since Naxx.
Demons do heal with fel. I mean, they make entire new bodies to incarnate into. You would probably get corrupted in the process, though.
Not every Draenei is 10,000 years old.
Not every individual Draenei is required to hold views that being a Warlock and now controlling the demons that oppressed them as vile. We’re never shown this kind of extreme reaction in-game outside of Yrel’s Lightbound faction in a sliver of the jumped-ahead AU universe. In fact, Draenei are usually portrayed as almost annoyingly forgiving, cheery and blissed-out on the Light (something that canonically makes livestock more docile). Even then, though, there’s certainly room for individual differences. Maybe some Draenei would go on a crusade against their Warlock-taking-up friends and family? It’d make for interesting RP, but there’s definitely room for variations in opinion an reaction within the species.
There are plenty of real-world examples of people getting one generation off of systemic genocide and not carrying it as part of their identity. There are plenty of examples of people who want to use tools that were used against them “for good”.
Would being a Draenei Warlock be common? Probably not, probably there would be raised eyebrows, grumbling, awkward family dinners, maybe some harsh words. But should that prevent anyone who wants to roll up one from doing it on the basis of the lore saying it CAN’T and NEVER WOULD happen? Absolutely not.
Player characters are outliers. Maybe they didn’t lose everything over enough time for many generations to be born, but Orcs still were enslaved, used for genocide and torture, permanently discolored, and shoved to a whole new world as soldiers then abandoned to become prisoners, slaves and refugees. And some of them never gave up being Warlocks, because manipulating fel and demons is useful as a tool.
Maybe they were especially pragmatic. Maybe they were seeeeeekrit evil. Whatever justification a player wants to come up with that works for them for their individual character should be enough.
4 Likes
The ones who are Lightforged are very old, while their younger members have only known war against demons.
Blizzard clearly shoehorned Lightforged into Warlock while deciding not to put in the work to justify it.
3 Likes
huh I forgot about that person. A draenei city has a draenei warlock trainer. Obviously the drainer tolerate friendly warlocks. That’s all the way back in tbc. Case closed.
We care.
/10char
1 Like
I could see draenei (regular and Lightforged) being interested in subjugating and commanding demons. That is the proper order if things in their
perspective. Not to mention an ironic revenge.
Would be a real twist if they were limited to Demonology spec for just that reason.
“victorian werewolves” makes me picture a worgen monk doing the boxing scene from Robert Downey Jr.'s first Sherlock Holmes movie.
“Ability to spit at the back of head: neutralized.”