If a draenei wants to lightforge themselves, wouldn’t they give up practicing their fel studies? If they want to remain a warlock, why bother wasting time lightforging? Just feels like someone playing a Star Wars RPG as a Jedi, and putting point in dark side so they can use force lightning, something that’s a Sith thing.
Personally I just want undead Paladins. And it burns me because I think the Forsaken were much better candidates for them than the Tauren.
Especially because like the Highborne for Nelf Mages, the Forsaken had an excellent excuse for Paladins amongst the Scarlet Risen.
And from a story perspective the Scarlet’s arc ending in them becoming undead and finding a home with the people they once saught to destroy would be pretty interesting.
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I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here.
Them visually setting themselves on fire with every attack would be far more interesting than whatever the hell Calia is supposed to be, at least. And it’d be a good metaphor for the kind of masochism you need to enjoy in order to play a tank or healing role.
“I am literally killing myself with every Flash of Light I cast so get the FEL out of the fire or I’ll MAKE YOU feel what I feel right now.”
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I’m saying classes can be made more available by making them more open to interpretation.
Like the Kul Tiran Shaman being Tidesages and the Tauren Paladins being Sunwalkers.
You could say with Draenei Warlocks they’re not bargaining with the powers of Chaos and are instead capturing them. Less dark magicians and more Pokémon trainers.
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This I’m fine with. It makes the current classes that are available to the races fit within the pre established lore.
This however is entirely different. They wouldn’t just be jailing said demons, they would be using their power also. You can’t say that you’re keeping them in confinement for safety or what ever and still use their fel power for your own purposes. It’s a complete contradiction to who and what Dreanei are and what they stand for.
Is it at all possible that the argument for lifting the restriction ban has less to do with wanting to be whatever class and more to do with not liking the established racial identity and cultural lore of the playable races?
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I wouldn’t mind different “flavors” of warlocks. It might work if they burned a lot of resources on warlock cosmetic customization. Using different spell appearances based the cosmic powers you draw from and pairing it with minion customization would be great.
Maybe one day they’ll sell class customization packs in the future as an expansion feature or just a cash shop item.
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Sure you can. It’s magic. How would that be much different from the already avaliable Shadow Priests? Only I don’t think they even bother to try to explain that.
These days I find myself inwardly cringing a bit at the notion of certain race/class combos being ridiculous or nonsensical. Sure there are some that are weirder or less characteristic of a race/culture’s themes, but I’ve long been of the opinion that decent enough narrative support can make nearly anything work.
Granted I fear the devs actually probably don’t care enough these days to put in that work. The AR combos reinforce this belief for me, there is little more than speculation to explain most of them. Sure some are easer to reason than others, like the LFD and DID combos, but some others, like Vulpera Warlock, are comparably harder or seem to come out of left field.
Overall I’d like the supposed spirit in which the restrictions were created in the first place to remain if the restrictions themselves were lifted; though if I can’t have one I’d rather not have the other.
Addendum:
In regards to preserving the lore of traditional combos in the face of some method of allowing players to diverge from those, I personally think all that’s really required is a greater presentational emphasis on those traditional roles; having majority racial representative npcs belonging to those roles with only niche outliers otherwise, while also providing more narrative opportunities showing how things are and why. No gameplay impact required.
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We’re talking about fel magic here. Sobering the Dreanei would never use. All magic is not the same. As for the shadow priests, you’re mixing class/race lore with necessary game mechanics. As shadow priests are a class spec they have to give it to everyone. That said, you don’t see the Night Elves, Dreanei, or Tauren using void powers.
And before you bring it up, the soul priests in Auchindoun did follow the light but were eventually twisted by the void.
Maybe, but personally I think there’s a couple of quirks about this. For starters, not all racial taboos are created equal. Lore explains why night elves loathed mages and warlocks and demon hunters (although why in the hell they’d accept DHs when they’re worse than warlocks is beyond me). But some other races just don’t seem to have much of a reason against them other than “because,” as far as I know.
The other problem is that WoW doesn’t let you divorce species from culture. You MUST be a Stormwind vanilla human or a Mulgore vanilla tauren or a Wandering Isle pandaren, etc. So if a race you want to play has a cultural taboo against a certain class, you don’t have the option of uprooting them and taking them to a different start zone to adopt another’s culture. Until the leveling revamp, at least.
We already saw that with demon hunters though >.>
To be fair, seeing 20 Ashbringers around every street corner during Legion was probably more damaging to lore and immersion than opening up more class/race combos. And by that I mean it didn’t really damage much immersion at all.
I just don’t see the harm in allowing far more race/class combos than what we currently have. If everyone is simultaneously THE Maw Walker, THE Highlord of the Silver Hand, THE master rogue or whatever of the Uncrowned, and all these other things, whether or not their class is a fringe case doesn’t matter. They’re already a fringe case.
Maybe a larger problem could be in roleplay. There are people who RP as night elf warlocks, undead shaman, orc paladins etc. already, I’m sure, though I suppose such combos might become more popular if they’re available ingame. Why should I care what other people do, though? If I don’t like what someone is RPing, I just RP with someone else and let them have their fun with their LF Draenei demon hunters or VE paladins or whatever.
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I agree. It lifted restrictions may work in done case but in others it just wouldn’t. Humans are an example of how lifting the restrictions could work as they delve into a lot of different things, forbidden and accept. Or a more focused example would be Night Elf Paladins. Lore-wise they already exist, but they would not be implemented correctly in game.
I see your point but the counter argument to that would be if we’re just able to remove the species from their culture whenever we want, why even spend the time building the background lore and the specific zones? Why not just have everyone start in one area and let everyone go their own class and cultural path? Yeah it’s great for player option but it’s a lore killer. Maybe the best option is to introduce another natural race with little history where it’s citizens (players) can choose what they want to do.
Which is exactly the problem with the “Champion” thing. Everything made more sense if you had nameless adventurer’s working towards a common goal. We have too much power and prestige and it shrinks the world.
It’s all relative.
Like wholesale Forsaken druids wouldn’t make a lick of sense to me. But between the Drust witchcraft and Fungal nature magic being a thing, if they tied them into that and called them Mushroomancers or w/e I’d shrug and accept it.
10 Likes
I want to see some more combinations available, but I think we need to keep some restrictions to maintain an aesthetic.
The Lightforged perhaps don’t need any Classes added to them. They can stay as a separate, Light based group without Shaman or Druids or Rogues or Warlocks.
The regular Draenei, on the other hand, are one race that has a lot of opportunities. Blizzard could easily give Draenei a few shades of red, then say a few Manari rejoined their people. That would then open up an acceptance of Warlocks among the Playable Race in the Story. Rogues might be an option, since we have the Rangari. But keeping the Druid Class from being available to Draenei is fine by me.
As much as I love the idea of a Blood Elf Druid, I am fine with Blood Elves not being able to be Druids and Shaman. That is a restriction that makes sense. Gnomes maybe shouldn’t be Druids either. Certainly Mechagnomes shouldn’t. The idea of Robot forms sounds cool, but not in regards to a Druid. Maybe Robot Forms should be an aspect of a new Class available to many races, like a Tinker.
Orcs should also not be Druids, but maybe they can be Paladins, depending on the Story. If Yrel attacks with her Lightbound Orcs, and brings Exarch Helscream, maybe Playable Orcs could get Paladins somewhere in that Plot line.
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Admittedly this is assuming Blizzard would put in the resources to do it, but I don’t think you need to ignore the lore at all when you could incorporate it instead. If these race/class combos are outsiders for a reason, treat them that way. Bar them from using the default starting zone, tank their initial rep with their own race, make them earn back the privilege to mingle with their own people in older content. That lets players create a new story through gameplay.
This is where my own bias kicks back in, and it’s something I had in an earlier post but I deleted it because I figured it was off-topic, but one thing I found really neat about WoW is that it gave players the option to play a traditional monster race, but in a potentially heroic role. That’s (personally) something I rarely see offered to begin with, and it’s something that appeals to me.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of the playable monster options kinda suck aesthetically. When I started in TBC, there was really just taurens and forsaken as far as I cared; orcs and trolls were too…demihuman, I guess is the word? Unfortunately I have a stupid hang-up about not wanting to play as a zombie. Also unfortunate was that I settled on mage to be my class, and your class and faction are the most important decisions you make, not race. So I just had to suck it up and settle for a troll instead of the cool-looking minotaur on the character selection screen while I’d hope Blizzard would add a cooler mage-compatible monster race for the horde.
Still waiting, sadly.
Allied races could have been a neat way to put a twist on the playable races had Blizzard wanted to do that, since the concept kinda sucks as-is when half of them are barely better than recolors of existing races. Instead, HM Tauren / LF Draenei became “base race but worse,” and mechagnomes / DI dwarves don’t bring any class differences whatsoever.
Vulpera probably come closest to what you describe, but that doesn’t do anything for me because their physical appearance doesn’t grab me. So I’m still waiting. 
Edit: Ugh I didn’t realize this post would be so big.
That would be the only way to do this. But how long until you have more players picking the outsider option? Suddenly the whole flavor and aesthetic of the race, in game anyway, has shifted.
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Quite extraneous but while I wouldn’t say it ‘shrinks the world’, I always thought the emphasis on the player as a single champion of all things has been rather clumsy and misplaced. In particular regards to WoD and especially Legion it’s implementation is rather torturous and arguably hurt the lore a bit in Legion’s case. Despite allegedly being the supreme leader of your class the game can’t actually have you play that role by making the decisions you’re supposed to make, and so places npcs directly under you who clearly should’ve been in the position you’re in instead; creating a scenario were the main class leaders aren’t pre-designed characters with inspiring arcs/history, but some nebulous shadow who can’t be defined because it is literally everyone in a meta sense. This is the kind of narrative for a single player game, not an mmo, and yet there it is.
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I dunno, I can’t say. That’d depend on how many people are willing to spend money or time race-changing or leveling new characters, compared to the current game population. People would absolutely do it just for the novelty of it, of course.
For night elves in particular, warlock and shaman look to be one of the least-played classes in general; they only beat out monks and demon hunters. Paladin seems like the least-egregious of the new classes anyway, and ideally you could offer a glyph recolor of their spells or something to fit in. I’d imagine attention would be split among them and void elves though, since (from what I’ve seen) the vast majority of players hold no value in void elf lore to begin with because that’s just their foot-in-the-door to be the high elves they always wanted anyway.
Just my uneducated assumptions though.
Right now we are starting to explore some death entities (dread lords) using every cosmic power to their ends, I would assume that some playable light forged (who are no longer under the direct influence of a naruu) could get similar idea.
I absolutely do not claim that such would be the norm, but I don’t think it is impossible enough to justify limiting the combination for the sake of gameplay. After all, we already have shadow priests running around.