The extent to which you don’t understand the “noble savage” stereotype is not something I care to debate on these forums.
That said, more is lost than gained. You’d still be playing a character divorced from attachment to their people, which I get you’re into that, but as you already stated we are already iconoclasts in so many ways that we don’t need another.
I have a silly little fan idea of a theoretical tauren mage that’s styled more after astrologers, kinda druid-adjacent but fire/frost/arcane would be represented by the sun, moon and stars instead. That’s assuming the tried-and-true “studied it because mage is supposed to be the intellectual caster class” somehow couldn’t cut it, even though that’s exactly the reason given for orc mages.
Exactly. People come up with these kinds of stories and rp as things that their characters literally aren’t, because it’s not available to them, all the time. Or they do it outside of the game, where those limitations can’t reach them.
Yes. But not into all classes for all races.
Blizzard has specifically said that NPCs are special and not player characters who represent their race’s main city and culture.
No it isn’t. Races are more than just a skin for your character. That is what RPGs are about.
Voicing opinion. We’ve all gone into in depth explanations over the years and are tired of these threads from people who don’t care about the base of this game and just want to shoot things and ignore that a long standing universe of lore exists.
No, far more is gained. Players get more options. Storylines can have more intrigue. New views and NPCs can arise.
Throughout the ENTIRE GAME, up to NOW, Tauren are nothing more than big dumb spiritualists that swing big things good and occasionally turn into animals. They have stagnated theme-wise. Why? Because they can’t escape the ‘primitivist naturalist strongman’ stereotypes thrust upon them. Same deal with HMT, even though they were in PERILOUSLY close proximity to Warlock practitioners.
We have explored what it means to be a ‘traditional’ Tauren to death. LITERALLY. We are in the Shadowlands RECYCLING AN OLD THEME.
And that’s just Tauren. I could go deeper for Orcs, Trolls, you name it.
It’s time to open all classes to all races.
It seems like a lot of support for this is coming from an angle of wanting more freedom to rewrite the world to someone’s personal head canon. Whereas that is a cool idea in some contexts and in some games, WoW is clearly trying to build a world different that what you’re selling here. This would be like a DM in DND writing a custom setting and having half of the players show up and make characters that don’t fit the setting AT ALL and say “well, I’M and individual!” its like, ok my dudes but the setting was made for a reason to tell a story, you’re just kind of selfish.
I mean… sigh or something, again with the untrue accusation that I don’t care about the lore of the game. It’s specifically that I DO care that I made this thread.
I can get behind this statement; as the first influential counter-point made.
But you’re not impacting the greater story writ large. You, or even hundreds of Tauren suddenly becoming Rogues or Mages, or Draenei deciding to give the ol’ fel energy another go, or Undead wielding Light, none of it matters to the grand story. All it does is inform a PC’s story. Sylvanas is still going to burn Teldrassil no matter how dope my Frost DPS is as a Tauren Mage, or how tightly I run my Undead Paladin’s rotation. BFA still happens. Baine still gets tossed from the cliff in the Maw.
All that player choice informs is exactly that, the player’s story. The lore is unharmed because the ‘unique individual’ never actually matters in it. It’s always a big-name NPC doing the Big Thing That Needs Doing™.
It isn’t a single player game, as much as some people would like that. You populating the world affects other people, for better or worse.
Eh, maybe? Sure, there’s going to be a degree of selfishness in these kinds of requests, because for one reason or another, WoW’s not quite capable of letting everyone line up their preferred race and class combos, even if the individual pieces are there. I don’t think it’s bad to request them though, even if the game ultimately never ends up doing it.
I know in my case, it’s because tauren and worgen are the only two races that visually appeal to me. But I’m a horde mage. I’m screwed unless Blizzard adds another race that’s compatible. People say that these restrictions help characters feel special, but I already don’t feel special because my current combo isn’t something I was happy with; it was something I had to settle for.
That’s not a defense of The Lore™, that’s a sputtering weaksauce reply from a position of defeat. Any entity that populates the world affects other people, for better or worse.
Almost entirely yes, where do you think Cataclysm race-class combinations came from? The advancement of the story.
There are Fel Tauren and Eredar in Legion who now have 0 place in the story, whos to say they can’t incorporate those clans into our playable characters, new clans were literally incorporated into the Tauren to give them priest and paladins, same with Night Elf Mages.
Dwarfs gained Shaman because we finally acknowledged that we’re also Wildhammer Dwarfs, same with Warlocks and Dark Iron.
The precedent for their existence is more than enough to be able to be incorporated.
Our player characters are literally the most unique thing in this world, yet not unique enough to be able to be any class in this infinitely expanding lore and world, no thank you.
In your world, all our playable races stagnate and die lore wise, it’s inconceivable to me that as this world’s lore expands that all our races stay in one spot.
Coming from you it is.
You care too much about something Blizzard tosses in the bin every other expansion, if the stories allowed to be ridiculous and breaks and retcons lore constantly, why shouldn’t we be allowed to have fun with it, no other MMO restricts classes to certain races.
No, its not a defense of lore its a rebuttal to your desperate assertation that you should be able to ignore the setting blizzard has created because its only affecting you. I’m just having a discussion, but your very trollish attempt to declare some sort of victory tells me what you’re up to. 
No, it’s not. Human paladins were created from the most virtuous/faithful knights and clerics. They weren’t just priests, they already had a stronger connection the light then most.
Show me one undead paladin that is such by choice. We have one single Night elf paladin, one npc alone does not change a culture.
They’re evil, and again Tauren culture is a big factor here.
He’s not a druid, he’s using arcane not nature.
The wild gods and drust have a connection to the emerald dream so nothing was thrown out the window.
OK, so what, I have to submit in triplicate my application to be a Human Mage? What if my Human Mage wants to join the Defias? What if my Kul Tiran wants to be a Paladin, which they have fielded in the past?
Oops, wait, I don’t get to do that. I’m a Stormwind Human that must do Stormwind Human things, beep-boop. You may as well be a robot for all that The Lore™ dictates.
If this is the extent to which your creativity is stifled by class restrictions then I have my doubts that you’re going to come up with anything less robotic without them.
Explain to me how I ‘creatively’ be a Tauren Mage. I’m listening.
EDIT: Because racial restrictions on classes are so inflexible, your story is ALWAYS the same. You are a Tauren, you came from dirt-poor Mulgore, you worship nature and hate technology, and you distrust the arcane.
Cool, thanks for telling me how my character feels about things. Because you mentioned DMs, let me inform you that a DM that tells you what your character feels about something without you being under a charm effect or something similar to it is a BAD DM.
Yes they do, they’re called trainers.
exactly, i haven’t been happy with my race as a druid since vanilla beta. this is the only mmo i play where i detest how my character looks. i dont like playing trolls or tauren but there is NO choice in the matter. i think that sucks.
Yeah how about Farseer Nobundo. The lore there is that literally one person listened to the wind, and now there’s draenei shamans everywhere…
EDIT: Heck, draenei originally started off as stealthy rogue mercenary people that Illidan hired to help him in outland, and then with BC they suddenly decided that they were actually this noble race of people that were being guided by the Naaru to Draenor, and that the draenei we alreadly knew about were “broken”