That’s my preference, though.
That lore background includes Night Elf Warlocks and Night Elf Paladins even if you can’t play them yet.
I have noticed that the Primalist Shenannigans in the Burning Steppes include a lot of Draenei.
I would put that to drainos being shaman. The Primalistics are still elemental in nature, so shamanens working with them makes sense.
But you don’t see much of the other shamanic races, the Horde ones seem to b absent.
But then again I haven’t done the Kalimdor ones yet.
It’s varied, but based on my observations; draenie are massively over-represented in the events, but there are other races in each zones. Some tauren are usually with them, occasionally there’s dwarves and humans, but I don’t think i’ve seen other races.
I agree to a point.
I think every race class combo could work as adaptations. Like the Zandalari Prelates and Kul Tiran Tidesages working as their answer to Paladins and Shamans.
Oh that’s not a Draenei Warlock. He’s an Exorcist. They study demonic magics not for power but to better understand the enemy to destroy them.
Oh that’s not an Undead Druid. She’s a Mycolomancer. RAS Apothecaries who manipulate fungal plague magic and use potions to shift into beastial combat forms.
And so on.
It’d just actually require effort to explain them in the lore and give them some unique spell effects.
Maybe there’s a story hint there.
I’ve seen a few vulpera.
That’s essentially what they did with Zandalari Paladins.
Originally their powers were derived of tapping into the divine powers of Rezan and ‘The Loa’ which was a cool new concept / tapping into the light of divinity.
However they then KILLED Rezan, and instead of saying “They tap into the divine power of Loa in general” they just simply watered it down to “We remember the virtues he taught us, and somehow light magic go BRRRR”.
Then to twist the knife and spit on the corpse, they erased Rezan in Shadowlands and gave his ‘spark’ to a humanoid (Vol’Jin) … Personally I had my pally as Zandalari because I liked the lore concept of it. It wasn’t generic of following a humanoid figurehead, or the typical light tropes and I was also a fan of the wild gods & loa - so it had fit perfectly until they ruined it.
Ultimately however I feel that’s something Blizzard should acknowledge more:
The Class Fantasy — In alignment with their respective races.
Lately the class-race dynamic has been suffering, as has the roleplay community (more so with all the crap Shadowlands did to the lore and various characters might I add). So it’d be nice to see them address it, even if it is just a ‘stay awhile and listen’ lines thrown in here & there.
What bugs me is they offed Rezan then didn’t really sub in a replacement. Bwomsamdi doesn’t really work as a Light themed patron. Vol’Jin I’m sure is well respected by the Zandalari now but until very recently the Darkspear were not highly regarded by the rest of trollkind. At the Terrace of Speakers they say to your face what they think about trolls frolicking with elves and the living dead. Him just being accepted as the new king of kings seems contrived at best.
All they needed to do was have a triceratops loa that was the patron of the Zandalari military. Gonk and Paku are supporters but their domains are a bit more abstract. A law and order, grizzled old vet god would’ve worked as a substitute. They even ride holy triceratops anyway. It would make perfect sense.
— And yeah, Vol’Jin being shoehorned as ‘The new loa of kings’ being described as ‘CONTRIVED’ is extremely fitting to how it was done … It felt all like a whole cringe tumblr / twitter fan-fiction ordeal, that didn’t seem natural at all.
Plus like you said, lore-wise there were much more fitting parallels for other Loa to simply become more powerful or pick up the mantle of the Zandalari-Paladin class.
It was just really weird. I quit midway through SL with Ardenweald being the only Covenant storyline I didn’t get around to.
And while on the whole it wound up being my favorite behind Maldraxxus, the bit with Rezan felt so stupid. Like there was zero story reason we couldn’t have just had everyone make it.
Ardenweald is for the most part brand spanking new lore. This sacrifice stuff is so completely arbitrary.
That story beat failed to have any impact. Because we knew Rezan for all of 13 minutes and I feel like I know less about Vol’Jin than I do Nathanos or Saurfang despite him being ostensibly a main character since WC3. So. They took away a potentially cool stranger to reintroduce a cool acquaintance. Okay?
I’m convinced this is why they’re doing the Ysera Malfurion thing. That story beat yielded nothing but “Why?” so, we’re going to do it again and ya’ll better appreciate it this time!
While apparently not realizing sacrifice is inherently meaningless if mfers can just waltz out’ve the afterlife like it’s a layover in O’Hare.
Yeah that’s something I despised about it too.
Which is why I’m routing for the conspiracy held by the eternals theory, where death in the Shadowlands is actually a false concept and that:
- You either go to ‘The True Afterlife’ of which is a one-way door, reflect later on that the Jailor’s actions of ‘Remaking reality’ would had disrupted that and allowed death to reclaim souls, bodies and necromancy unlike reality has ever seen.
- Or are reincarnated into the physical universe without memory, who and where you reincarnate as depends on who you were in life and death. Which would make any reincarnation beliefs in Azeroth canon once more + those that Roleplayed those tropes restored again.
- And lastly, that godlike-beings ‘dying’ in the Shadowlands (Such as Wild-gods & Loa) are actually still reborn into the physical universe with memory – But as a mortal, and without their godly power(s).
This would give death an impact, although its not an eradicating impact – It’s still a large impact nonetheless and could also open up large story, lore and a whole heap of content & questline opportunities too.
My only takeaway is the Forsaken should use this as a recruition tool.
“Hey guys so turns out the afterlife is a confusing series of windows with a lot more robots than anyone would expect, and sometimes God’s email filter goes on the fritz and just sends you all to the trash folder which is of course an eternity of pain beyond description. Plus turns out like there’s like - dead undead?So, might wind up like this anyway. Morgraine did. Idk. Anyway why not chose alternative mortality? We promise having to self operate to replace a dodgey colon or shoo a possum that crawled up there is 9000% less confusing and unsettling. Plus we still have alcohol and won’t make you watch community theater or mind wipe you”
Yeah, with the current Shadowlands ordeal it definitely makes undeath in reality less of a ‘Curse’ and way more of a blessing in disguise. Another reason to why I’m routing for my conspiracy held by the eternals thing - because it’d restore the former concept of undeath once more haha.
However yeah, at the moment it’s like you said:
— “Hey guys so uh … if you think the afterlife is filled with mysticism, spirituality and wonder along with your life choices & identity having grand meaning and purpose - You’re wrong. It’s robots - lots, and lots of robots. Also along with mind wipes to be shoehorned into servitude, occasionally destination to hellscape zones due to the computer of death faulting or deciding your a transphobe (don’t ask) and then even more robots.”
Yeah … Shadowlands ‘writing’ really dropped the ball. lol
I just can’t get over how WoW’s answer to Lucifer wasn’t a devilish trickster like Denathrius or a hellish force of pure destruction like Sargeras.
But the most boring MFer WoW has ever had as a villain. Who was… sigh… actually doing naughty things to prepare for war against an even greater evil.
And then it turned out he was a crash test dummy. Which would imply the Winter Queen and by extension Elune are also robots.
And I hope to God we never find out who built them or what got Zoovy Dooby Do all worked up. Because I’ve never cared less about anything.
The Orcs turning out to be the slaves of a demon army was a cool twist. The undead turning out to be the same thing was pushing it. The demon army doing demon army stuff because of Cthulu was getting silly. So the super demon army with the super devil also being afraid of something else is just pants on head at this point.
And I don’t care anymore. For the love of all that is sweet and beautiful in this world can we just focus on Azeroth? Why where we on a Halo ring fighting beta versions of toucans. WHAT WAS THAT?!
this accidently makes Shadowlands sound kinda cool
JUST//FOLLOW//NASAL:DESIGNATION//ALPHA
I’ve never been so simultaneously confused and angry.
I am glad I played that with a friend just so I could turn to her and go;
“WHAT WAS THAT?! WHAT DID WE ACCOMPLISH?! AND WHY DID WE TAKE ORDERS FROM FERAL LAVA LAMPS?!”
Deep Breath
It gave us femme dreadlord models canonically, and that’s all that matters.
Hoping it’s revealed later that he was a puppet on strings, by actually Denathrius or plot-twist ‘The Primus’ (As originally planned) and he just said that to throw us off.
Thing I hated the most about it to be honest.
That the mystical eternal beings of various respective afterlives were just … robots.
Like, the Shadowlands expansion twisted the ‘Fantasy’ trope in the WoW universe more and more into a Sci-Fi theme. Sure there’s been sci-fi elements in WoW in the past, but SL just went overkill on it. They turned around and said “Nope. No fantasy - It’s robots, and equations and entropy.” which felt less & less like the warcraft universe I knew and loved in the past.
I enjoyed the lore up to Legion. Even the Legion stuff’s prime goal being against the void consuming the cosmos – but Shadowlands painting Jailor being responsible for everything was just such an exhaustingly underwhelming eyeroll. Also it doesn’t make sense. “I need to recreate reality to save reality – Even used the void to do it who sought to consume & meld with reality and used the light who sought to subjugate & blend with reality and used the Legion to do it who sought to scour reality.”
Like jeeze Blizz, take a writing class - Don’t just steal all the past cool concepts & storylines of the past to make your new $#!%%y villain ‘more cool’ and threatening or imposing.
The biggest cop out however, of which I loathed — was how they said Chronicles wasn’t canon and was ‘Just the perspective of the Titans’ which was just a load of BS simply so they could push their @$$ fisted terrible narrative ideas of ‘The First Ones’ and what the Jailor was supposedly responsible for.
I think the last thing we want at this point is for it to be revealed that yet another character was spending eons secretly manipulating the guy they said was spending eons secretly manipulating everyone, even if it’s a much better character, like Jar-Jar.