I see a good bit of people complain about using the undead skin (the red eyed one) when it is used in combination with druid for night elves and paladin with blood elves. But I always thought this was fine?
There have been plenty of undead characters in lore who use holy magic. It may cause them pain and they probably need incredible will power, but it can be done.
And for Druids…. Wasn’t the whole death side explained through the drust? Or maybe I’m understanding it incorrectly? So theoretically it could work the same with undead night elves. Night elf society might hate the idea that they practice it or perhaps they view these Druids as people who twist it for their own benefit…. But it still works right? Night elf society would probably just treat them no different than ebon blade night elves
The short answer is, it doesn’t make sense.
The long answer is, it does make sense if you really, really want to, because who are the others to tell you where your limits are in a made up fantasy world with made up rules you choose to follow by your own volition. Or don’t.
I’m legit trying to see if they are established in lore or if the people in general chat who occasionally talk about them ruining lore because they allowed them to be undead with those classes are correct. Because if I am wrong , I don’t mind learning from my mistake. It’s just that I always believed they were the ones who were wrong. So I’m trying to figure out from lore experts in this forum section to get everyone’s opinions
Drust were described as using “Druidic death magic” at Blizzcon 2017, but that was changed to simply “a more macabre version of druid magic.” That being said, I don’t see anything in the lore that says Undead are physically incapable of being Druids.
Honestly, the skins are lore-breaking only in the sense that nobody acknowledges you as being undead when you use them, the same way SWTOR has no extra dialogue for playing a Sith Pureblood Jedi.
Also, if those skins represent undead elves defecting to the Alliance or joining the Blood Elves, then we shouldn’t have been allowed to use them on our already-established characters. They should’ve just restricted the skin to new characters and put them in a new starting zone.
Lorewise I have no problem with Undead Druids, since as you mentioned it the Drusts made it clear that druidism may also favor the Death aspect of the cycle. The problem is that unfortunately the playable Druid class has none of those nuances, it only reflects the Kaldorei take on druidism and it’s all about growing plants and stuff. So I guess that’s where people argue there’s a disconnection/a complete contradiction between Undeath and druidism.
However the other problem is that this skin is intended to correspond to the Dark Rangers, and at the end of the day Dark Ranger is already a class in itself. But yeah that’s ultimately because of the gameplay and character creation restrictions
I am not aware of anything that literally forbids it beyond the general intuition of life and death being opposed forces. Druids as a deathly concept is potentially neat but poorly reflected by the class, which is not a celebration of the cycle of life but a weird gardener of Approved Life.
What I am is a kind of cranky old about this stuff. And as a cranky old, I suspect the average in-game complaint isn’t a secret lorehound who read the right book that explained why it is not okay, but people basically tired of how anything seems to be okay as a concept if it would be cool. When most of the people you deal with are “exceptions”, it doesn’t feel exceptional, it feels like an onslaught of nonsense.
I’ve long given up on the idea that any sort of cosmic force matters in any meaningful way to WoW.
I always viewed the dark ranger skin as more of a darkfallen skin since it can be more than just the hunter/dark ranger style classes. But I can see how that can be a problem. Especially since it’s called dark ranger skin in the achievement.
Could Druidism potentially be waved away with the playable forsaken monks? Because I believe chi was said to be life magic , correct? And yet we have undead monks.
Perhaps maybe in the future we could get forms and options to express the death side of Druidism then. Sort of like the wicker forms of the kul tirans. That may help to fix the disconnect? Because that is a good point about them being focused on nature and the night elf side of things. But at the same time I understand why because that’s how Druids were from the beginning.
That would be amazing and I think that’s what we’re all asking for yes. The lore of druidism has greatly evolved since the early state of the concept and now we know that the Cenarian tradition is not the only one and that not unlike shamanism, there might be several interpretations of druidism depending on the culture.
Personally I would like classes in general to be less centralized. Having several options available in terms of Class Orders would be really nice.
I am not, however, holding my breath. Every spell that is glyphed or can be glyphed increases database load by adding another check, and further reduces the clarity of what spells are being used in both PvP and raid.
I would really like this and I don’t think those are important enough factors to justify the non proliferation of glyphs and spells for alternate traditions, but i strongly suspect those are the reasons we don’t get more.
Personally my problem is somehow there are playable undead Paladins and Druids but not for the undead faction.
But lorewise Undead Paladins make sense to me. The undead can use Light magic. There’s one Ask A Dev answer that suggests this would be painful for them. But it never comes up anywhere else so I don’t know if that’s considered canonical. Between LForged DKs and Calia I’d figure it’s probably not.
Also there are many, many undead Paladins in the Scarlet Risen. So they’ve been in game for over a decade they’re just not playable.
Undead Druids are a lot more troublesome as the undead are not part of the natural world. So much so that some animals are afraid of them. But I do think you could make an adaptation of undead Druids in the same vein as Tauren Paladins and Troll mages.
I’d have them associated with RAS and be called mycolomancers. Basically Druids of decay and fungi who wield the undead ecology seen in the Plaguelands and Maldraxxus. We also see Apothecaries shape shift somewhat frequently so you could just have stiched abomination versions of the animal / moonkin forms and replace the tree of life with those mushroom dudes.
But just regular old Cenarion undead druids is bizarre. Anytime I see an undead druid I just pretend they’re corrupted by the nightmare.
There are Darkfallen Blood Knights in ICC. Their paladin abilities have a necromantic glazing, so PCs will never properly emulate them without taking liberties, but they are functionally undead elf paladins.
Death-druidism has an even more explicit basis in the lore, one actually explored at decent length, but likewise demands aesthetics denied to players.
Darkfallen void elves are weirder than either. Who they are and where they come from are left entirely to the imagination. They’re Blizzard’s first loreless dip into the “just let everyone do everything” philosophy and personally I’m not a fan.
More broadly, visiting the barber to decide your character’s mortality strikes me as pretty stupid, but if the one skin is all the san’layn/darkfallen representation we’re ever going to get then whatever.
I find it funny being an undead void elf holy priest. Nothing gives me the giggles than that. Especially when you look like my character. Fully consumed by the void and only red pulsing eyes staring back at you. I believe we need to not think about it too much and enjoy the Darkfallen option.
Officially, lore wise, the undead elf skins are for hunters only. But Blizzard can’t restrict character customization options that can be accessed via the barbershop by class.
So as a result we’ve got people using the skin for their druids, paladins, priests etc etc. There’s nothing that can be done to stop that, but as far as the lore is concerned, it’s hunters only.
True, but the playable ones are officially hunters, specifically Dark Rangers.
It’s why when you complete the achievement you unlock ‘Dark Ranger Elf Customizations’ and not Darkfallen customizations.
That doesn’t stop anyone from using the customizations on a rogue, paladin, warrior etc (I use it on one of my warriors personally), but as far as canon lore is concerned, only Dark Rangers joined the Alliance after the upper levels of the Undercity were reclaimed (they were already a part of the Horde so…).
The actual achievement you earn that unlocks the customization.
When you complete the ‘Return to Lordaeron’ achievement the reward specifically states ‘Dark Ranger’ Elf Customization as the reward. I feel like that spells it out quite clearly.
Also, every single raised Darkfallen elf that was part of the Horde, with the exception of Lorash Sunbeam, were all rangers. There are no warriors, druids, paladins or priests among their ranks.
But as I said, you’re free to create your own stories about why your character looks that way. No one, not even on RP realms, is going to get in your face if you decide you want to claim that your warrior was raised as a Darkfallen, but officially in the canon lore, only Dark Rangers were raised.
That’s gaming mechanics, they’re not going to give a different name for each character that takes it.
The only thing that’s restricted to hunters are the armor transmogs.
And Ranger does not mean Hunter, it’s membership in a club, not a class designation. Each of my Guildmades for instance is a Ranger in our RP no matter what class they are.
