Every race should be able to be any class. I don’t understand why we lock races to certain roles. This is my argument…
Lightforged Draenei can be Warlocks and Deathknights.
40 Likes
I would like the following order
gnome druid
gnome paladin
gnome dh
gnome evoker
gnome shaman
other things (if any)
I also want to steal the nightborne back from the horde scoundrels who got them even though they don’t appreciate their deliciousness enough
4 Likes
The classes which remain race-locked are all classes with unique visual assets based on each race. The obstacle is not lore (as much as it should be…) but art team time to make those new resources for all the new race additions.
Shaman need totems.
Paladins need mounts.
Druids need forms.
Demon hunters need skins and demon forms.
Evokers… would probably be ahead to just unlock all races for visage forms.
Blizzard has stated its intention to open up more of these combinations. It’s just a lower priority than all the other new stuff the art team has to make for any given patch.
8 Likes
You’d think. But because Blizzard is terrible conveying the reasons why these races would have the classes, we get the goobers that drool on about how the only Demon Hunters allowed should be Blood and Nigh Elves even though it makes zero sense.
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Fel orcs and broken draenei should have been demon hunter options since day 1 and I will not be convinced otherwise.
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Draenei, Orcs, Worgen–literally anyone can be a Demon Hunter. There’s no innate, racial prerequisite for 95% of the classes.
Just a bunch of goobers gatekeeping.
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More homogenization. Awesome.
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+1. I’m not gonna join in the conversation this time though. For some reason you can talk about most race class combos but the moment someone mentions blood elf druid people become activated like the winter soldier and get incredibly offended.
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Demon hunters have more justification than others given only the extreme specificity of their class origin, having to have been part of Illidan’s forces during Burning Crusade’s time frame in order to fit into the starting zone’s timeline. Fel orcs and broken draenei both fit this bill (better than night elves, in fact).
I am firmly on the side of preferring race/class restriction be added gradually with lore justifications ala Cataclysm’s combination expansions, because which classes a race has and does not have access to provide a ton of identity to those races, and needing lore connections to the races they can be gives classes greater range of inspiration and direction to draw from in their design and evolution. The creation of the sunwalkers to cover the addition of tauren paladin is the most flavorful expansion on the class’s base form in the game’s history, and serves as the basis for an entire Hero spec today.
Conversely, monks are the posterchild for how the free-for-all combination approach can actually harm a class, as never needing to come up with any basis for non-Pandaren races to be monks left the class without any context to draw from for its evolution except Pandaren and kung-fu tropes. If Blizzard had restricted monks to fewer races based on their ability to come up with lore for how and why those other races’ cultures developed their own variations of monks that coalesced into the new class when the Pandaren provided the final touches, we would have much broader design space for the class based on that additional lore, and maybe their Hero specs would be more diverse than, “Pandaren, Pandaren, or Pandaren.”
All that said, Blizzard has clearly indicated the direction it’s chosen on this, and I’ve accepted the cause is lost.
1 Like
I mean, we just got Warlocks unlocked. It’s only a matter of time before Blizzard realizes all the allied races are lame and actually works on the miniscule amount of assets needed for Paladins/Shamans/Demon Hunters.
Yes and scrap factions while your at it!
Let players choose and change sides! Shadowlands should have been 4 way covenant pvp.
And give worgen tails!!
3 Likes
I meant the cause of keeping lore-based restrictions around, as they clearly have chosen to proceed with the free-for-all approach.
Oh well. At least I’ll finally be able to play a demon hunter without cringing once I can roll Pandaren to round out all that edge. 
Why do people think LFD DKs is some sort of “gotcha!”?
Warlocks I get but DKs? Those are fine lore wise.
Death Knights being a universal class made sense when they were released. As an unwilling transformation forced on the character subverted the need for cultural connections to justify them beyond timeline, and their removal from their own cultural context actually reinforced the alienation baked into the class identity.
That is, that all worked for Arthasian death knights. Allied races all came along in the era of Bolvarian death knights as something the character made a willing choice to become like any other class, which brings back the need for cultural context to support why they would be making that choice. And for Lightforged, the context is very much opposed.
Because you gotta pay to spin to win 
Ok, I’ll take me and my bad joke out of the thread.
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There is no reason we don’t have Gnome Paladins yet. Even in lore it would be acceptable as they have been around paladins for YEARS now.
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Dude, where did you get this? Seriously?
The new Four Horsemen went around the new BfA zones and picked up bodies for Bolvar. That’s their lore. They didn’t pick it anymore than 3rd generation DKs.
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No, you’re allowed.
1 Like
I must be misremembering the intro when I rolled my Zandalari years ago, then, because I could have sworn it indicated it was something I’d chosen.
Legion class campaigns are admittedly a blindspot in my lore knowledge, since I hated Legion and quit it without finishing any but the Shaman, and have only ever gone back and finished Hunter’s retroactively in order to get access to a specific artifact appearance.
Probably because its dumb and breaks immersion and lore and looks silly. They’ve already broken it enough for the lowest common denominators.
3 Likes