“Shadowlands and BfA were terrible and ruined the lore, irredeemable xpacs that butchered our story…precisely to the point that I can feel legitimized in asking for the butchery of all of the story remaining!”
It’s like, bro, we get it, you never cared about the story and are using Shadowlands and BfA as a reason for your headcanon/fanfic to be taken seriously. But, still, no thanks.
The double standards are real with this fandom. If they never cared about the lore in the first place, they shouldn’t had issues with the aforementioned xpacs. But they do.
Again, player convenience will gut the soul of this game.
I agree in the end.
If (forum) players had it their way this game would be an unappealing mess of meaningless homogeneity.
I think that’s a “real world” problem coming to the game though. The “blank slate” types seem to be a significant part of the forum community.
Edit: You also see a lot of the “rebellious teenager” mentality to justify a lot of the requests.
“But muh orcs have spent enough time around night elves to cast off the shackles of their upbringing and become druids!”
Or, maybe, they just aren’t interested in that and don’t care for it despite you desperately wanting an orc druid? Perhaps “rebelling against the culture of your upbringing” isn’t such a fetish in Azeroth as it is in 2024 America?
All race = all class is not what’s butchering the lore. If each class can maintain that cultural motif I don’t see the issue. (i.e. racial shaman totems, paladin chargers, etc.)
Anything and everything can be canon without butchering the status quo.
Only time it becomes an issue is when the fandom tries to solidify the idea that the Human Paladin is the only correct paladin and forego all the rich, untapped potential with Anshe, Elune, or pure unfettered Zaladalri devotion.
But that is just one of many examples, and you can draw from multiple examples for each combination of race and class, from Druids to Warriors and Rogues.
The problem is player expectations around class and race fantasy have gone askew for some reason.
Excepct that’s not going to happen. Zandalari/Tauren Paladins still have Uther Hammers in their Divine Storms and Hammers of Justice. Many Paladin talents reference Tyr, a Titan Keeper. All Shamans can have Ghost Wolves, makes sense for Orcs, not so much for the others. Draenei don’t turn into talbuks, Dwarves don’t turn into rams, or snowsabers.
Again, we don’t see any An’she or Elune influence in those classes. If they do make nelf pallies, they’ll be throwing hammers around like dwarves and their light will be golden and not silvery white. Even the night elf priests lack Elune influences as their holy spells have no silver white color. One talent lets a priest summon a Naaru to help out. Makes sense for dreanei, but not for all the other races.
If they’re willing to add racial identities for each of the classes, then I’ll tolerate it. But that is nonetheless a lot of work, and make cost a raid tier.
Seems what people who complain so much about getting rid of faction barriers don’t understand is these barriers themselves are the “butchers”.
Reducing everything to “human vs. orcs” isn’t “being concerned about lore”.
Pretty tired of Night Elves getting dragged down for the sake of blue vs red mentality just because there’s some group over there that is supposed to join Horde or humans need to be at the center of everything. If there’s one thing that took the entire Nelf culture away was these factions.
Besides, have you heard of Demon Hunters? Have you heard of the Alliance, full of DKs, warlocks and what-not? Draenei have to be hostile towards, let’s say, a orc warrior or a draenei warlock but not towards a human warlock or a nelf demon hunter? This notion that a race can’t be a certain class but are all part of a faction faction that is filled with the very thing they’re supposed to so veemently against is ridiculous.
Let’s not forget Horde druids, which have been add in vanilla and butchered Nelf lore right away.
They are not in the Alliance but it still sets a tone for it. Also Death Knights do not have their own faction. They are either Horde or Alliance, they made their place in those factions as well.
Not every Man’ari had a choice, unless you are trying to say they could have chosen death. Then you have children of Man’ari and the children left behind where is this the only thing they know. Or are we just going with every Man’ari was there from the beginning chose power and never had any kids. Then I see holding to the belief that 100% of Man’ari made a choice. I feel we can have empathy for people forced into becoming demons and wish to live a different life.
As for it being inauthentic or behave in unnatural/ unrealistic ways, I don’t see that. There are many stories that highlight the human nature for forgiveness even in the most unforgivable cases. Velen is portrayed as a character that can achieve that level of forgiveness.
This kind of talk is how we got Sylvanas ‘redeemed’. And look how well THAT was recieved.
It sure would be nice, and something that would happen in the world itself as far as NE/Draenei warlocks go. I mean come on… You think every single one of them is going to ‘Remember the mistakes of history, and swear to never repeat them’? That kind of storytelling makes SL look like a masterpiece.
In an MMO the lore will evolve more than other traditional RPGs. The homogenization of lore so that X is just like Y will happen over time.
People that play D&D now probably wouldn’t understand why dwarves in 1st and 2nd edition couldn’t be mages.
The round about point I’m making is that one of the big lore killers is time itself, to stay relevant and make $$$ blizz must try and follow other gaming trends that seem like a good idea for it’s player base.
What causes that type of thing to happen? Can’t possibly be from a pointless faction war shoehorned into the narrative 
What tone? The Alliance hates the Forsaken.
Everything else wouldn’t make sense.
Lorewise, most of them belong to the Ebon Blade.
The only notable exceptions are Thassarian and Koltira. Thassarian was sent on a
suicide mission, Koltira was imprisoned during cata until legion.
The only excuse of the Death Knights is that they committed their crimes as mindless slaves and are therefore incapable of guilt. This doesn’t apply to the Man’ari.
There were many Eredar who didn’t feel like it, yes. They fled with Velen.
And then there are the Krokul.
Man’ari are Man’ari because they choose to be. They are Kil’jaeden/Archmonde loyalists. That’s their lore. They’re not slaves, they’re leaders.
I doubt that demons reproduce that way.
Forced? You made that up. That’s not their lore.
You can have empathy with them, but they can’t have empathy with you, because fel-corruption kills your ability to feel empathy.
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Fel#Effects_on_beings
Tell that to one of the victims of today’s wars and put him face to face with the murderer of his family. I’m sure it will work.
At least you will witness true human nature.
I just wanted to say that I appreciated this post a lot and makes me reflect on what kind of effect the factions have had on this game after so many years.
Looking back on it I think I’m beginning to understand (finally) that BfA being polarizing wasn’t all about the Sylvanas stuff.
I mean they nuked two capital cities funneling everyone into Orgrimmar or Stormwind respectfully. That killed whatever diversity the factions has because you don’t exactly see Undeads chilling out in haunted houses in Orgrimmar, and you don’t have any big magical trees in Stormwind either.
That just leaves Dwarves, Gnomes, Dranei on the Alliance; Trolls, Tauren, and Goblins on the Horde getting virtually no recognition or reinforcement outside the heritage stuff.
So be it. Id rather not hyperfocus on seasonal progress if it ultimately means a more lively world with better characters and stronger fantasy.
But sometimes I do get tired of the “but muh raid tier” debate. Anything can cost a raid tier, including a selfie patch. I’ve concluded that it 100% boils down to a management issue, especially now with a trillion dollar company backing this game.
A rather useless point about lore being butchered.
Warcraft 1 orcs had neceolytes (pretty sure I spelled that right) the lore description said they were the spiritual leaders of the orcs and commanded the spirits of the underworld.
Warcraft 2. Death knights are made from the souls of dead orc warlocks and human knights, no mention of necrolytes.
Warcraft 3. Shaman are spiritual leaders and new version of DK. Necrolytes seem to have vanished.
WoTLk. If you play horde you can find a DK allied npc in ICC called a necrolyte.
See it’s time and poor writing on the part of blizz, the spiritual leaders of the horde became random DK Npc
We really are.
The part of the all races: all classes thing that bugs me is that Blizzard is half-a**ing it by doing stupid half measures that can only succeed in pissing off more and more people.
Either go all in or admit that widening the class options was a mistake and offer free race swaps to people who have ineligable choices.
Guess all races all factions works for blizzard and if they removed factions they could just write elf stories. Need a shaman for a plot? We can just use a blood elf now, no more needing to keep other races around blood elves can do it all. I don’t actually think this would happen…but then again that does require a bit of faith in blizzard.
Probably because “the players” aren’t one person with a singular idea of what they want but a diverse array of people whow ant different things.
Retcons are the bread and butter of this game. The vast majority of Wc1 has been retconned to oblivion. Same with Wc2, and even Wc3. Blizzard will likely never change in that regard.
How are those nonsense?
pointing out a call to tradition falacy “this is the way it’s always been so this is the way it always has to be”
Why can’t I magic all pain and despair in the world away?
The answer is the same.
We literally have necrodruids already.