Blizzard had to pull out a tiny subgroup that has barely any relation with the rest of Kul Tirans in order to give them druids.
Look at kul tiran heritage armor. That’s the race’s theme. It has nothing to do with druidism. It clashes heavily with the thornspeaker’s fantasy.
This got me looking at RealmPop to see the numbers and while you’re exaggerating, you’re too far from being on the nose.
At 120 there are aprox. 30K Zandalari on US realms and 9k KulTirans. At all levels only 36k KulTirans vs 74K Zandalari.
Currently, the most popular Allied Race for both Horde and Alliance are Void Elves at 108K at 120 and Nightborne at 65K at 120.
At their current rate of growth Zandalari stand poised to overtake both of those pretty quickly.
It’ll be funny if Zandalari ever overtake Blood Elves as the dominant played race in the Horde. But that’s a much bigger hurdle with 632K Blood Elves at 120 and 4.138 million at all levels.
I mean tbh Kul Tirans are a bit all over the place conceptually anyway.
I’m not exagerating at all. I’ve been curiously following the numbers over these last few weeks.
| Date | Zandalari | % Growth* | Kul Tirans | % Growth* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| mar-12 | 0 | 0 | ||
| mar-17 | 5,246 | 1,427 | ||
| mar-20 | 9,732 | 85.51% | 2,543 | 78.21% |
| mar-24 | 18,305 | 88.09% | 5,170 | 103.30% |
| mar-26 | 25,561 | 39.64% | 7,494 | 44.95% |
| mar-30 | 30,933 | 21.02% | 9,268 | 23.67% |
*Growth over last measure
**I’m considering only US population at max level
Zandalari growth rate will surely put them above highmountain and lightforged by the end of the week. And it may even surpass mag’har and dark irons.
Yeah.
It’s kinda why I feel I wasted my time leveling one, they’re so on the fringe of KT culture that it’s hard to build any good transmog sets with them.
Feels like it also undermines Worgen a bit. They should be the Druid kingdom if anything.
It would be interesting to see how many max level and active max level Zandalari Trolls there will be given theres not many lore members who fully joined the Horde, all Talanji did was fully ally the Zandalari Empire with the Horde as equals (can see Sylvanas dislike this was funny as hell) when most other races and factions join under the Horde like the Nightborne and Highmountain did as well as the other races of the past.
Basically they added an Alliance thing where the races tend to be more equal with heavy interactions but never fully under another (although Worgen might be part of Stormwind idk fully there yet), example being Tyrande doesn’t answer to Anduin nor Varian and can act 100% independently as a national faction but if say the Thunderbluff Tauren suddenly did that as an example then the Horde as a whole seems uneasy and worrysome about it lorewise.
I like the Wicker Druids.
I’d never play a Kul’Tiran. But I like the Wicker Druids.
The wicker druids are an interesting concept. It just doesn’t fit well with the themes of Kul Tiras as a nation and culture. There’s no relation between creatures of wood and bones with the sea. The thornspeakers seem like an extraneous culture forced into kul tirans for the sole purpose of allowing them a class, or else there would be no druids at all among Alliance allied races.
Compare to tidesages, whose themes of elemental power fit very well with a nation of seafarers. It makes sense that there would be kul tirans capable of bending the storms, the sea and the wind to their will, making the shaman class feel more natural.
This is also very clear in questing: tidesages are everywhere, in Tiragarde and Stormsong, and are part of the main questing in both those zones, while the thornspeakers are side quests in Drustvar alone.
Personally, the Thornspeakers are the only reason why I’ll unlock Kul Tirans as an Allied Race ![:joy:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")
. Otherwise I’d have no interest in them. I love Druids ![:smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smile.png?v=6" ":smile:")
.
Paraphrasing to mean: ‘We will no longer call ourselves High Elves’
Name change…
Not a mistake.
No, as in they are no longer High Elves.
They were High Elves, but are no longer. Blood Elves are different to High Elves, culture, political affiliations, ideologies.
Even the recent Christie Golden book ‘Before the Storm’ confirms this in Chapter 3. It also refers to the Blood Elves as ‘former high elves’ not ‘formally known as high elves’.
There is power in names. You want to ostracize or elevate someone, give its status a name. You want to make someone sound pathetic or majestic? Choose a name carefully.
When Kael’thas renamed the high elves, he set them in a different path. The name change was used to abolish old customs and accept former taboos. Suddenly, in the name of survival, and to avoid the deaths of any more of their people, anything was acceptable. It started by unbanning some types of magic, then evolved into accepting any kind of covenant that could benefit them, be it with naga, demons or the Horde. Soon, they were draining power from living things, rebuilding their capital with fel, exiling the non-conformant and enslaving a being of light.
Those who saw what they were turning into abandoned that path before it was too late. They sought to preserve the old customs as best as they could in foreign lands. These elves were also changed by their path, but they kept the old name.
Names have meaning. There’s a reason why the race name in the character screen is “blood elf” , after all. There’s also a reason why Blizzard chose to make different skins for high elves. It’s a very simple reason, actually: because they may look similar, but definitely are not the same thing.
Wicker Druids should be a Worgen thing.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Drustvar. On one hand I love the themes of the zone, hunting witches in a dark woodland and all the black magic going on. On the other hand, it really shows that they likely won’t ever have a concept like this for a Gilneas storyline, so it essentially steals themes from Gilneas. Gilnean and Worgen stories should be the ones that play with gothic horror themes and tropes, because that’s literally the motif Gilneas is based on.
I feel like they really should have had Alliance races be more involved in the KT zones. Horde interact plenty with Zandalari, but Kul Tiras? I feel out of place on anything other than a human.
And Worgen should have had presence in Drustvar.
I think worgen druidism should be centered on their “werewolf” condition. A dire worg form instead of bear, a wolf form instead of cat, an “old model worgen” form instead of moonkin.
The idea of wicker druids could be the foundation of an entire new race, IMO. It fits neither kul tiran “nautic” themes nor gilnean “wolf” themes.
It was the writers. The same people who write all the lore and all the story!
If it were still creepy style, sure, but I get the feeling “werewolf druidism” is what Blizzard’s idea of what their forms look like now. (Cat and bear with wolf features, and boring recolor moonkin and travel forms.)
Personally I’d like their druidism to resemble the Blackwald.
I really don’t get the people that keep saying blood elves are high elves. tbh you are being very rude to all blood elves when you say that. Blood elves want nothing to do with those filthy, disgusting, low born high elves.
Morning everyone. I’m just gonna ignore those jabs Lydon took at me after I left and move on. Last night was …rough. ![:expressionless:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/expressionless.png?v=6" ":expressionless:")
I really feel like some of the players arguing that Blood elves = High elves should look at the “Sin’dorei Proud of Their Heritage” thread and try to remember where they came from- even if it doesn’t apply as much today.
It’s just… the name change. The name change is so important and the anti’s just toss it aside like it’s nothing. If I mained a Blood elf and was a Horde for most of my play time instead of Alliance, that would personally bother me.
I feel like the importance on the meanings of names is often lost on the modern world and especially us Americans.
The ancient world held those meanings. A name could speak of a person’s lineage, it could speak of their accomplishments or their core beliefs and aims. This held true for individuals and organizations. It spoke of their allegiances, missions, authority, creed.
Sometimes, people will have multiple names that denote relationship, in ancient cultures this might be one name for family and tribe and another for outsiders.
In some religions people change their name when they become priests or nuns to symbolize that they are spiritually not the same person as before.
Also in religious and spiritual cultures names held literal power, either through use over others or over the named entity. This is why Rumplestilskin’s name is important. In rites of exorcism it’s depicted that the exorcist will command a demon to give him their name. Or they’ll use Jesus’s name to compel the demon. In Jewish Kabalism it was believed if someone could find God’s true, through math, then they could wield the ultimate power of God on Earth.