Yep, bring on the Void Elf Paladins and Mechagnome Druids…
Honestly gnome demon hunters will be hilarious cause I’m sure it will use the same meta as night elves.
So them going meta then swapping back to this tiny jacked eye less gnome will be a sight to see.
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This is what they’re talking about:
There was some debate back then about the dagger-carrying tauren then Blizzard put the debate to rest in Cata with this guy:
So yes the Grimtotem have always had rogues. They even had Mages until Blizzard turned those NPCs into shaman.
yeah, that… still does’nt sit right with me. i mean, play what you find interesting, but like… still does’nt feel right. same thing for the undead pallies and druids.
i mean, as someone who loves the lore, with each class given to every race, i am both excited, and depressed.
like, we got draenei rogues, which makes sense what with the rangari being a thing. but on the other… lightforged death-knights… even though lorewise they should just explode since mixing light and undeath magic is not a good combination.
…i mean, i can forgive the lightforged warlocks, since if your fighting the legion for years and years, someone on your team’s gotta consider turning the demons against themselves. but like… i dunno. other combos just feel weird. like mag’har warlocks. they go through all the training to control the demons… but don’t drink the demon-koolaid? fels weird.
all this being said, i feel like race/class lore is hanging by a thread at this point. like ‘actual’ undead pallies would make sense to me, since we have a couple undead that can actually use the light (calia and alonsus faol), but when/if they give us orc pallies… the lore stops making sense. the fel in their blood is what stops them from connecting to the light. it should’nt work (i’m letting orc priests off the hook with the old ‘all undead priests are actually shadowpriests’ logic).
tl:dr,
i’m ok with more race/class combos, but i feel like it’s ripping apart the lore with each one we get that does’nt make sense.
but hey, that’s just my 2-cents.
You do know there are more than one order of paladins, yes?
Or is this just the typical troll post where someone tries to flex their edginess.
My body is ready!!
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All can be explained by horrible writing. These little things are what keep me away. This was my first 60, back in vanilla, and dumb lore/story/bloat are what keeps him benched. Deleted every other character and moved back to classic. Retail will never appeal to me with this game design.
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Its funny reading the responses from the “Inclusisivity Crew” and the weirdo justifications. Ppl like that are the ppl in school that would show up to football practice wearing their jockstrap on the OUTSIDE of the uniform and argue with you when you try to tell them they have it on wrong. Dont worry about it, let them look weird then 
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Yeah we don’t need any weird justifications. This is all we need:
Blizzard: “all races can be paladins!”
Us: “Cool!”
Done.
They are the same. They belong to the same orders, they implicitly hold the same beliefs.
That’s why your class was always seen as this meaningful choice; it wasn’t just about mechanics, your class actually says something about your personality and beliefs or perception. And those classes also have intricate lore for how they came to be.
Blizzard’s new approach undermines all of that. Draenei are a small group of Eredar that fled Argus untold millennia ago, and have been hunted by their kin ever since. The idea that Draenei would become Warlocks is absolutely ridiculous. And then you have the Lightforged Draenei, who are not only Draenei, but those who undergo a special ritual to dedicate themselves fully to the Light, infusing their bodies with its power. And now those guys are Warlocks, too?
It is unabashedly stupid. It completely disregards their own lore, and removes any pretense that the lore, or even broad themes, hold any sort of weight any more.
You’re making this all out as “oh you guys don’t want anything to change”. We just want consistency. We have invested nearly two decades into this game and its lore. Changes like this are basically giving us all the middle finger. Broaden the scope of what these classes can be, or who can be them, that’s fine. But this isn’t that; this is a complete disregard for the things that make any of them feel “special”.
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Ah yes. I too remember when Orcish Grunts and Human Footmen consider each other brothers-in-arms and the same personality. Apparently WC1 was just a fraternity prank gone wrong. Or Gnomish Warriors and Tauren Warriors. Or Night Elf Warriors and Blood Elf Warriors. Hell, I even think the BE Warriors are literally considered Spellbreakers.
They have different names (Footman, Grunt, Brave, Sentinel, etc). They have different origins. They have different stories. It does not matter that they all go to the same Class Hall, that’s not important. What is important is the why, and you’re basically screaming ‘I can’t come up with my own ‘why’ so I want Blizzard to do it for me.’ Why is my character a Warrior? Why is my character a Mage?
That is why I call out people that try to rally around the cry of the classes and races ‘losing their identity’. No, they are not. Is Thunder Bluff a new Dalaran just because Tauren can now be Mages? Of course not, the Tauren lore remains intact and healthy. Is Orgrimmar suddenly a bastion of holy practice just because Orcs can now be Priests? No, of course not, the Orcish fantasy remains one of potent rage and a search for honor.
To listen to you, all races only have one story to tell and the PC is doomed to walk that path, now and always. Whatever the racial stereotype is, the PC is. See one Tauren, you’ve seen 'em all. No surprises, no intrigue, no individuality. Blizzard does not need to write a reason for my characters to pursue the paths they do, I’ll supply that on my own, thanks. I’m not playing a pre-gen of theirs.
A good character concept takes into account and weighs how important a character’s heritage might be to the individual. Why did my Tauren become a Mage, when her culture is steeped in distrust of the Arcane? She witnessed the power it could produce and wanted it for herself, or she was saved by a Mage when her other training had failed to protect her, or she spontaneously developed a talent for magic and hid away until she could find proper tutelage to develop her Arcane prowess.
Those stories could never happen, according to you.
Nothing stops you from roleplaying. The difference is, you’re asking that no framework of any kind should exist.
A lot of the theming of individual races and classes come from their history. And that theming is represented in what options are available to them. Orcs don’t have Paladins because Orc beliefs and Paladin beliefs don’t intersect. Some restrictions are a little more to do with specific lore (Undead bodies literally burn away at the some of Light-based magic), but those things are indeed important.
It’s not practical for every race to have completely distinct class choices, but I think that is very much the intention. It is, after all, built on the foundation of the RTS games, where each faction functioned very differently.
Classes represent the overlap of ideals that exist between races. Humans and Dwarves share a lot of similarities, and that is of course reflected in their class choices. Just as Druids were extremely relegated. It’s obvious that these restrictions were intentional from the very start.
And from a design perspective, the classes available to each race also communicate quite a lot about those exact races. Night Elves aren’t just “purple humans”, they were originally the only race on the Alliance that could be Druids, which communicated that they were a culture that apparently shared a special connection with nature, even without knowing a single thing about them before hitting the character-creation screen.
Letting everyone be everything renders lore and themes completely and utterly meaningless. Hell, at that point classes are purely a burden on the game, because if that lore isn’t meaningful, then you’re essentially left with 30+ different specs broken out across different characters that may as well just all be rolled into one.
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Again, the framework is there. It’s in the history of the races and their cultures. You don’t also have to be mechanically clubbed over the head with it for the message to come across. ‘HEY THE NIGHT ELVES ARE A DRUIDIC SOCIETY SEE THEY’RE DRUIDS MAKE SURE YOU PICK DRUID WHEN YOU PICK THIS RACE’ ‘Yeah but I want to try a-’ ‘NO PICK DRUID YOU’RE NOT PLAYING THE RACE RIGHT.’
I know the Night Elves are a naturalistic and secretive society, I see that in their theming and their portrayal. I see that in how they speak and address one another and outsiders to their society. I see that in their society’s unending reverence for the natural world. Now the question that comes next is how much does that origin influence my character?
Again, the why is the most important component here. Why isn’t my Night Elf a Druid? Why did my Night Elf discard their naturalistic teachings for whatever class I did wind up picking?
Druidic Night Elves are a dime-a-dozen. I can throw a rock and have an 80% chance to hit a NE disguised as some critter, and that’s even AFTER Teldrassil. That story’s already been told by the game itself. I want to tell the story of my characters.
The framework you’re banging on about, the lore you’re trying to argue is being killed or made superfluous is, in fact, still as impactful and present as ever. Having the ability to pick a class outside of the race’s usual purview (or perhaps even completely counter to it) actually reinforces the lore; a non-Druid Night Elf sticks out like a sore thumb and naturally draws questions.
Dungeons and Dragons had this exact same growing pain decades ago; Paladin was a Human-only class. And with the dawn of 3rd Edition, which allowed all races to be all classes, we had this exact same debate; ‘Humans will lose what makes them special’ or ‘Elf Paladins, it makes no sense’ or ‘Dwarven Mages will make the race unrecognizable.’ Yet the fantasy and culture of every single race endured to this day, despite the availability of every class to them.
Everyone’s not ‘becoming Human’. Everyone’s just getting a chance to tell their own particular story without their racial origin clubbing them over the head every 10 steps of character creation.
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