And the child will rebel at that age; before they grow up, before they sign up, before the grueling training, before the trials, and before the lightforging process.
The restriction on night elf mages lasted until Cataclysm, and the setup to open up that combination started the expansion before. This premise isn’t true.
I would actually point to dark iron dwarves bucking that trend. Their most popular bar is (was?) owned by an accomplished warlock who does not hide their skills. Someone more familiar with the forsaken could clarify but they are also a faction that seems to have no qualms about warlocks.
Warlock restrictions not being based on culture has been true for draenei until at least the end of Legion, for lightforged this remains the case until the entire recruitment scenario is retconned. Stating otherwise would be somewhat revisionist.
Disagreeing with previously established rules applying to class/race restrictions does not make those rules, or the adherence to them illogical. Your previous points hinges on the conclusion being true, and this isn’t the case.
As mentioned, warlock is largely not a cultural norm for any of the races, bar some exceptions you point out. It is also important to note, that a forsaken warlock, curiously enough, are among the warlocks who say: “Yeah, our magic is tolerated on the battlefield, but we are told to otherwise shut up when we get back home.”
My point overall is… classes were artifically restricted, even if blizzard tried to justify it with culture, it is highly illogical. Because humans can be warlocks, even though their culture does not support it, gnomes can be warlocks, even though their culture does not support it, orcs can be warlocks, even though their culture does not support it (Even under Garrosh). Playing a race that is a part of a culture that does not support your chosen class, is clearly not enough justification for a class to not being available.
Because at the end of the day, our characters are our characters, we decide what they should be, what professions they should have, and, if we are into the roleplaying bit, even just at a minor scale, why our characters chose to be what they are. So if a tauren decided he wanted to learn arcane magic, nothing could stop him. Not culture, not biology. He could just go to the Blood Elves and learn. If a tauren decided that he wanted fel powers, whelp, warlock it is!
And the exact same thing goes for draenei. They wanted more power and they wanted to beat demons with another demon to further torture the heinous cretins? Whelp, warlock it is!
I mean, it is not like warlocks CARED about the opinions of others in the first place. The dislike for warlocks are known to all - they purposefully went for the disliked position on their own whims.
The warlocks would also disguise themselves as mages. In the lore. So warlock would be a class that could multi class honestly if it was more true to the lore to disguise themselves in society. Imagine them having like 6 specs lol.
Anyway we have nice forces of warlocks/demonhunters that aid us. Black harvest warlocks and us recruiting more race/class combos would make sense with the class halls and Legion and all.
As we oppose the burning legion and defend azeroth in our own way. Warlocks are the first basically antihero class the game introduced like dh, dk, and edgy races like forsaken fit them good.
You’ll note that of these races, all of them have undefined backstories, or blank slates before your creation as a character. The details of their life before you take control of them, are malleable.
And Garrosh? not for lack of trying. being a warlock in Garrosh’s horde during SOO, has them quite literally wiped out. Every warlock in the drag is pretty dead. Under his “iron horde”, you could viably say that yes, orcs aligned with Garrosh were class locked out of warlock.
Causality however, tends to operate in one direction. If you choose to be a Forsaken, at some point, you died. If you’re a worgen, at some point, you contracted the curse. For LFD, this prerequisite is that at some point, you passed the trials, and became lightforged.
Reconciling the process of being lightforged, of becoming an anathema to demonic forces, and then cavorting with those same demonic sources your character had to prove they opposed in theory, in practice, in action, and ultimately, in essence, tends to ask for a more involved explanation than the relatively blanker slates offered by pandaren, night elves, tauren, troll, or even other draenei.
Nullifying previous details takes more effort than creating anew, and that is a problem inherent to LFD.
Wrong. In order to become a Warlock and use that sort of magic it turns them evil.
This isn’t a "cultural taboo* (and you’re not the first person to say that, which is 100% wrong), this is an irredeemable “turning to the Dark side” moment. In the fact, however, there’s not one to pull them back into the Light. Once you go Dark, you can’t go back.
Man’ari is a life choice.
The reasoning behind Draenei (the ones that shunned that choice) going Man’ari is not only weak at best, it’s literally nonexistent.
Side note: Have any of you actually seen the new “Let’s become Warlocks” questline? It’s weak. They barely explain anything. Hell, the Panda becoming a Warlock is wear a GAS MASK PREVENTING HIM FROM SPEAKING, thereby giving you ZERO explanations into the Panda’s reasoning for seeking this power.
Correct. With Draenei, they are not though. We have a defined reasoning why WE cannot be Warlocks. It’s actually part of our lore. As you mentioned, Humans and Gnomes don’t have that hang up. Simply “shunning” a practice, in their case, doesn’t preclude them from pursuing that power.
I’m glad that you’re exploring the possibilities for warlock recruitment.
You’re right, the black harvest has significant pull, a solid base where warlocks can practice without judgment, and can be considered one of the biggest lumps of warlock knowledge in the game.
I would have no problem with the new race combinations being transferred through this particular path, and there is actually a precedent for it, as this is similar to how AR DK’s have a different DK starting experience.
possible, but my limited understanding of the darkmoon scenario seems to be that it’s a unlock quest that you do with a max-level warlock, so the new character starting experience may not be there.
They haven’t done that for past combos. They have added npcs explaining npc rationales. But you could make your own based on some of what npcs say.
They recently added orc priests and tauren/hmt tauren mages/priest npcs in thunderbluff and org. So they could honestly just use the outer world to explain such things. I liked how they adde the dranei pirate npcs. Playing into the outlaw fantasy.
For stuff like maghar orcs they just need to add some maghar recruits in the cleft of shadows honestly. Pandaren are naturally curious, could simply add them in the cleft too maybe by a black harvest recruiter.
In the campaigns we sort of get recruiters for all the halls, could simply put that as a simple explanation that they were recruited by class halls, and sprinkle in some personal reasons why they pursued the dark arts like they do in the darkmoon maire.
I know in WoD we had a pandaren say that he wanted to be a demonhunter in the WoD capital. Also had an orc druid there too since WoD.
Have you seen the new quest? Most of the NPCs say very little. The Panda says nothing at all.
Stop trying to give Blizzard an “out” for their terrible writing on this.
Maghar are less of an issue than Draenei, LFD, or Tauren (both types). These races have literal story issues with becoming Warlocks. They’ve been explained to be irredeemably lost if they become Warlocks.
Blizzard needs to reconcile that with more than just a cursory “Eh, it is what it is.”
Considering that Lightforged are largely inspired by Space Marines from Warhammer 40k I do believe it would eventually be a thing that one of their own went ahead and did something drastic in order to better fight for their purpose.
Hence why I still find the entire attempt at reasoning with “cultural norms” as illogical, and it is actually far worse with the Lightforged, because they are the most likely to take on any power if it means fufilling their purpose, they already did it once.
Man’ari was created by Sargeras, it is not just a matter of being exposed to some residual fel mist here and there. No, Sargeras himself, the prime demon God, decided to put his own magic into transforming the eredar.
That is like saying that all warlocks would grow demonic appendages simply for being warlocks, and while they can if they somehow stumble upon a much stronger source of fel, simply being a warlock is not enough for such a total transformation. It requires a whole lot more. Such as a strong fel exposure, either from drinking demon blood or, hell, drink demon blood and eat demon flesh in the case of the Demon Hunters.
This is further supported by Orcs and Blood Elves, both on which we have seen what different levels of fel exposure can do. Some simply radiation from burning crystals simply turned the Blood Elves eye-glow from blue to green. For the Orcs, it turned them from brown to green. Now, if either began to gorge themselves in demon blood, we started seeing drastic physical changes. Orcs would turn red (or some manner of dark-greyish colour as seen in WoD) as well as grow demonic appendages, and Blood Elves would start showing a variation of unnatural skin colours as well as grow demonic appendages
My head canon would be, that the Lightforged draenei are actually far more protected from such corruption due to their lightforging. So… yeah, best warlocks
I did hear it was weak. But I also think it was a mistake for blizzard to try and write anything to justify the combinations in the first place. People won’t be happy regardless, it is a waste of time, and the story will never present anything we don’t already know… people do not like warlocks in their societies, the end.
There is nothing saying that draenei CAN NOT be warlocks, do not be silly.
You don’t need any grand reasoning to be a warlock/witch. Just an interest in magics.
In wow we are all heroes/soldiers of our armies. We are not civilians. We rise to be champions. Warlocks are just naturally antiheroes.
Don’t need much explanation for it ingame since they are naturally not common parts of society and use dark magics either for personal gain, power, or you can fill that reasoning as part of the rpg with what you know.
Dranei warlocks can probably just be curious mages, civilians saved by the alliance warlock, dranei willing to learn fel after they saw how it helped defeat the burning legion/liberate argus/ etc. The champion could have a positive impact on how they view warlocks. In the quest you see a disguised dreadlord teach people how to do fel magic. Another dreadlord raised the scarlet crusade and made undead paladins quite easily with the magics they understood from infiltrating each cosmic force pretty easily.
Giving blizzard an out is easy for me because it doesn’t need much explaining and I don’t really care. Ain’t much fuss when I play my nightborne warlock. The lore reasoning was the felborne and their interest in magics. A night elf warlock could have been one expelled long ago by the kaldorei, or a hermit, or just an Illadari who couldn’t be a demonhunter so they turned to the black harvest.
All those stuff exist in the world already. Players can fill that stuff in within the rp community. It’s not like being a witch/warlock is ever commonly exempted in most media. They have to hide/disguise themselves depending on if they are good or bad. We haven’t seen much forces of good fel users besides like Illidan and the ones that allied with us. There could be a bunch of natural fel gods we haven’t seen (probably locked away) since we have seen how the shadowlands work and arcane has its pantheons. We have yet to see pantheons of other cosmic forces.
Sargeras is originally a titan thus of arcane and represents fel, but probably not the true forces of fel. There is a gap of knowledge we probably aren’t aware of the fel. Since the representative of it isn’t demonic, but a twisted titan figure.
Never heard stories about someone raised to be a particular life like go to law school or become doctors like their parents. Goes to college the whole shebang and then realizes that it’s not what they want for their life and quit and go their own way?
If you wanna see LFD as a cult. There are people born and raised into a cult who became adults went through all the rituals and religious practices and then leave.
Or how about military brats who grow up join the military than go awol/desert. Or at least resign their commission as soon as it is possible.
Rebellion and moving on from the life of your parents is not unique to teens.
