And you will become a stark rarity as people opt to not want to slit their wrists every time it comes to group content and decide to try something better. Which is an option. Unless you play a Dracthyr, then you’re just SOL. Wow, such a wonderful and great design choice, I get to have a permanent struggle because my preferred race is locked to a singular class.
Unless, you know, I want to be a Commander Data instead. Who would be a more common class instead of something Android-specific.
This is why you don’t make racials that pigeonhole a race into a particular role, it’s bad design and it makes your race one-note.
Commander Data, who can be used as a floatation device? Backup computer? Unstoppable strength? Superhuman speed? What you are asking for is a Data that would allow his crewmates to die if the tasks required to save their lives would require him to exceed artificial human limitations. Yes, the dude wants to be human… but his entire arc, ostensibly seeking to become human, is about accepting himself as a unique individual and essentially embracing his android nature. So… not the greatest example.
Again, it’s not that Dracthyr would be incapable of being a Warrior, Monk, Mage, Priest, or whatever else. It’s that making them those classes would necessitate ignoring their innate abilities, which makes no sense.
Should you be able to be a Dracthyr that is able to pick up a sword and do some damage with it, without forgetting how to fly? Absolutely! But WoW isn’t that flexible. It never has been. And probably never will be.
The entire point of using Data as an example is because he does not let his identity as an android define himself. He is a Starfleet Officer first, THEN an Android. Just like how one might be a Warrior that happens to be a Dracthyr. Also, again, the Dracthyr’s racials should really be part of the Evoker class, with more universal versions being given to non-Evokers. Again, Evokers can Soar, but all Dracthyr can glide, because Evoker is training to bring out your full draconic potential, but you still have some baseline essentials in your racial ‘kit’.
They are doomed as a race then, because if they are that inflexible, they become obsolete content the literal moment we leave the Dragon Isles. Dragonriding is not going to be the new normal for flight in WoW.
My lived experiences says otherwise, but that’s purely anecdotal… which is nevertheless a notch above entirely speculative.
Dracthyr join the Horde or the Alliance. Being Horde or Alliance does not define their innate capabilities as Dracthyr, just as Data choosing to join Starfleet did not define his innate android abilities.
A Dracthyr isn’t going to see a friend in trouble and not fly over to them to assist them or fly them away from the hazard just because they’re wearing Alliance colours or holding a sword. Just as Data isn’t not going to leap through space, utilizing his innate nature as an android, to save his friend and crew, just because he’s in Starfleet.
I hope that your dismal vision for the future for this game never comes to pass. And it doesn’t look like it will, thankfully.
Again, you haven’t answered the question of ‘what awaits Dracthyr in the future’? Other races get to have new classes added to them. Other races even get to try NEW classes. The Dracthyr, as you want them, are going to be in the future what they are now, which is static and boring. No matter what new systems get introduced, they will be permanently excluded because, again, they can only ever be one class.
Which, when it comes to long-term viability as a racial choice, proves to be a massive problem. And yes, I know Horizon did ‘dragon-class’ nonsense. It also died in the water because that was its sole claim to fame and turns out everyone being the exact same gets rather, well, same-y. What a shock, I know.
An evoker wouldn’t do that.
A Warrior might not have a choice. Just like a Warrior could absolutely tank the hell out of a raid boss. The only thing an Evoker can tank is the floor after a boss cleave. Wait, I meant the only thing a Dracthyr can ever tank is the floor.
Yes, let’s defend laziness and half-measures pretending it’s a full-fledged race that’ll totally be relevant in the next expansion, when even the Allied Races have had more future-proofing put into them.
This is worse than borrowed power, this is borrowed content.
This has literally never mattered for any race before.
And that’s the problem. A Dracthyr Warrior literally wouldn’t be able to use his giant wings and from an immersion perspective, would just ignore that they exist? That’s asinine.
That’s just blatantly false. There’s literally no argument to be made here, because of just how self-evident the truth is. Classes and races are permanent additions to the game. Always have been. Always will be. They will grow and change just as other races and classes grow and change. There is no difference here. And it is ludicrous to suggest that it would.
And again, to be clear:
I do think that this is an issue. I just think that it would be a very lazy, half-baked solution to simply let them be more classes.
Because no other race has ever been restricted to a singular class before. Other races can have their class options expanded upon and further grown, but the Dracthyr? Always, always stuck in the singular class. Always a mail-wearer. Always a caster. Never a tank. Never a melee. Looks like they forgot they had dragon claws, but hey, easy to overlook am I right?
A Dracthyr Warrior wouldn’t have giant wings. They might have no wings. Or they might have smaller wings. Because they didn’t choose to go down the path of Evoker and develop their natural talents, they instead decided to trust in steel and shield. Hell, the Pandaren, Worgen, Tauren, and Vulpera have natural weapons, yet they turn to arms as quickly as a Human would, because it turns out putting your body versus steel tends to not work out all that well!
If the Dracthyr can’t have more classes because they’re all Evokers, then how the hell is anything changing for them? ‘Ooh, our talents got adjusted a little, now we get to do 1.5% more fire or something’.
Wow. Amazing. So much better than possibly netting Tinker or doing a cool Dracolich theme as a DK.
What I’m saying is they’ve made a huge mistake in trying to tie these abilities to the race instead of the class. Again, the race has no future in expansions beyond this one because there’s no incentive to design for them. They can’t be Tinkers. They can’t be Death Knights. They can’t be Demon Hunters. They can’t be whatever new class would be invented. They will always only be Evokers.
The best the Dracthyr have to look forward to would be their talents being adjusted. Wow, what an expansion-worthy feature.
I don’t think that matters to as many people as you think it does. I could be wrong. But Blizzard has always added the most relevant classes to a race, as informed by their biology and culture. Just like Dracthyr. Yes, there are a niche amount of people that were dying to play as an Orc Priest, Tauren Rogue, or Troll Warlock… but none of those things were “make or break.” I would argue that none of them were even important to the success of those races or classes. Most people just create a character and off they go, without a second thought.
Just like any other player, now that we’ve finally ditched borrowed power.
Except other races can receive new classes. Other races can continue to grow and expand with the world as new opportunities present themselves.
Hey everyone, Tinker class! Wow, cool!
Dracthyr Player: ‘Oh, well, uh, okay.’
Hey everyone, Bard class! Wow, neat, I wanna try it!
Dracthyr Player: ‘… Guess I’ll just keep my caster macros…’
Hey everyone, Lich class! Ooh, cool! Wow, from WC3?!
Dracthyr Player: ‘… Screw this, I wanna try a new class already.’
Hell, I’m STILL waiting to play Paladin because it’s not on any of my preferred races, and if I don’t get to play the race I want to play then what’s the point?
Don’t they have a leap? It could be empowered with wings. Do they still have intervene? Could be a flighty animation. Kick could use a wing buffet animation.
This is one of those things where IMO wow missed the ball on having races actually matter for each class. Drakthyr warriors could have had stronger abilities with wings in exchange for lower health from being petite.
Seems like they’d be able to learn the other caster classes though.
That’s the thing. I’m not an “Orc” player. I’m an Orc Shaman. Adding Mage, or Priest, or whatever else to the race is meaningless from this perspective. That adds nothing to the character I’m actively playing. I have also played this character since release, and there has been something in store for him - for good or for ill - with every expansion.
That being said, I do see and understand the core of the issue you’re getting at. I think you’re overstating it, however, and you’re not really open to exploring other potential solutions. At the risk of beginning to simply talk in circles, I’ll take my leave from this particular conversation now. I think it has been wrung dry of anything potentially productive. The last word is yours.
The last word is this: There needs to be massive pushback against this kind of thing because if Blizzard thinks they can get away with it, they will do it for future races, locking them to singular classes because it’s easier to design. This hurts both current races (that can’t explore the new class) and the new races (because they’re stuck in a single lane function-wise).
Based upon n all the videos and on some cases articles I’ve read for DF, not saying it as a bad thing mind you or saying it as an insult but DF is essentially looking like a huge experiment for blizzard sold as an expansion. Talent trees , dragon riding, profession revamp, customization options galore for the new race/class and even the spirit of “bringing exploration back and no myriad systems “.
This is a “so let’s try this and see what the players think then the NEXT expansion will be more in depth”
That’s my takeaway not saying it’s requiring a lot of thought it’s pretty obvious to me.
The point here. I think vast customization for more races will follow I think DF is gonna forever change flying for the rest of wows life span and I think talent trees will be here to stay but they will get tweaked over time of course.
To me it sounds good I’m not a raider nor do I log 30 hours a week with the game (note to save me from being a hypocrite I WILL play ALOT when DF releases I normally play a ton the first month of any new expansion though I didn’t for SL).
right now the content creators I go to have pretty good reviews of alpha this far so hopefully that Carrie’s to launch.
Yep. For me, the most exciting thing about Dragonflight, aside from the theme, is 11.0. I can’t wait to see all this stuff actually carrying forward to the next expansion. Furthermore, I can’t wait to see how the next expansion pans out without having to worry about a myriad of systems.
Even though Dragonflight is getting rid of borrowed power, they’re still burdened with designing the systems that will be sticking around for awhile.
So why or how could they, when they are just being introduced to the world and having the world introduced to them know what mortals do?
This is one reason why multiple classes out the gate might not be a thing yet will come later on, either during DF or in the expansion/s to follow.
It is not that you are wrong here, it is just the Dracthyr are missing one element that is kinda needed for the adaptation you are talking about: exposure.
If they’re soldiers, it’s not a far stretch to assume they would analyze a variety of tactics that have been deployed on the field. Perhaps they did not necessary meet the same terminology as we know them now, but there’s no reason to think shields, armor, and arms were nonexistent and their use undocumented. Yes, many may retreat to the safety of becoming an Evoker, but that doesn’t mean they all 100% would. It would make sense for them to arrive at a ‘combined arms’ approach to cover the gaps present in the Evoker class. Kind of like how Tauren Paladins are ‘Sunwalkers’; their unique name for their flavor of the class.
If they were indeed meant to be soldiers, who said they had the ability to learn about such things before they were hidden away?, think of them more as the kind of experimental soldier that had their program or training stopped or not even started before their project was canceled.
More or less I am calling Occoms Razor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor) on why the Dracthyr are not able to be other clases, and the simplest explanation for such is just a lack of exposure for one reason or another (lore wise) and mechanic wise, well , Blizzard just did not want to take away from Evoker when it is a selling point of the expansion.
The last word is yours.