often when it comes to asking for more race/class combos i hear “uh why would an orc want to join tyr’s guard and become a paladin?” and to me that’s just silly and assuming that every orc everywhere is part of some hivemind or that they are culturally monolithic (and using the orc example again they’ve been established as being anything but when they had different clans with their own unique cultures and customs). this isn’t just about orcs, but, i’m wondering about other races too.
nobody ever asks “uh why would a human living comfortably in stormwind decide to give all of that up and become a criminal rogue, warlock stealing people’s souls and using other people’s lifeforce to fuel their magic or become a shadowpriest and teeter the line between reality and madness?”
The unique elements of the different races are ultimately what is appealing about them. I feel like WoW’s history has shown that removing the walls between those elements ends up homogenizing things into The Human Show, with special guest: Other Humans masquerading as [player race]!
Also, this subject tends to end up with people trying to make it about real life, so good luck.
could you delve a little deeper and explain how/why you feel like adding more/race combinations has lead to homogenization? or any examples you’ve personally observed? i’m not saying what you think/feel is untrue or illegitimate, i just see people say “homogenization” a lot and it comes off as a very surface level to me (ie instead of a generic nameless orc shaman with no backstory or proper place in the story, what would be the harm if it were a generic nameless night elf shaman with no backstory or proper place in the story)
I mean, the Blood Elves litteraly have a deity, the eternal Sun, Belore, which could have been wonderfully used as a focus point for the Blood Elves to differentiate them from the Human faiths, instead they go the same route, sadly.
The answer is: it is not a necessity, for sure. I’m highlighting that Warcraft’s attempt to write it without sacrificing faction/race fantasy has not netted positive results.
In my opinion, the lack of options in the established world-building led to a homogenization, most of the archetypes inherent to the classes can be clearly assigned to certain races. Instead of making something special out of it, Blizz went the route of simply imposing the concepts on other races, which in turn caused them to simply adopt them, and in the end both the race that was now playing a new class and the race that the archetype came from lost a lot of flavor and uniqueness.
I think most people agree that adding new class-race combinations is often a good thing when given a unique spin on it (Sunwalkers, Different racial priests, Thornspeakers, etc.)
I just meant that as a general question because it seems to be the common attitude whenever Blizzard says ‘we are opening all races to X class.’
This is headcanon.
There is nothing within the lore stating that the Belves have a specific ‘Belore’ deity.
We know there’s some reverence towards the ‘Eternal Sun’ or the Sun in general as a concept, but there’s no ‘Belore’ or deity attached to this.
This is just something that caught on within the Roleplaying community and people ran with it.
That is not correct, the eternal sun, Belore, was the defiance of the Highborne who turned away from Elune, they turned to the eternal sun, Belore, that is lore since Vanilla, the book still exists ingame which tells exactly that
Nothing is meaningfully integrated into the racial corpus, so to speak. Tauren druidism is as rarely mentioned sidekicks to Night Elves who were themselves diluted away from their initiative savage presentation.
Sunwalkers were spun off as new lore then never touched again.
Blood Knights are just paladins in red.
Kaldorei had hierarchies based on druids and priestesses that were essentially handwaved.
Is why I advocate for leaning into players being the exceptions rather than inventing new cults or organizations out of thin air to stand around somewhere without meaningful consideration to the cultural significance or impact.
Although, I may have misunderstood the premise if you just mean things like Orcs/Tauren mages in the Twilight Cult or that one Night Elf pursuing Paladinhood, etc.
They planned to build their own magical kingdom, Quel’Thalas, and reject the night elves’ precepts of moon worship and nocturnal activity. Forever after, they would embrace the sun and be known only as the high elves
That’s what they are now, but originally they had a really good concept that made them incredibly interesting and was relevant to the Belves’ story in TBC.
In the old WOW encyclopedia it was even more clearly written out that they chose Belore as the countermodel for Elune. There was even a special section on TBC´s Page, but I can’t find it anymore, unfortunately…
no i was just speaking more broadly. for example i don’t think it’s a stretch for a human/elf/worgen/gnome/etc to become interested in stuff like elementals and seek to join the earthen ring for example. my ideal would be to see how their culture or ideals and how something like shamanism could intersect
The fact that all of the classes are bound to a single over arching organization instead of having something unique for each of the races is part of the problem.
i don’t think it would be necessary for something like shamanism, unless you’re a dark shaman then making contact with the elements and forging a pact seems pretty cut and dry in the same way as being a mage means you spending years and years studying magic and learning spells
I’ve already pointed this out but there’s a ton of lore issues with the way the comics portray it starting with the name of the capital of Quel’thalas itself. If anything trying to make it a radical, immediate shift makes everything dumber especially considering the whole thing with the light only starts millenia later.
There are buildings in Quel’thalas referred to as shrines or temples of the moon. They’re still called that In Burning Crusade. They were hugely important to the protection of Eversong Forest.
Also adding, if we’re going in a war of absurd fanon, I’ll still maintain that the tale about the guardian sun in Fairy tales could only have come from the high elves, as they would be the only culture in the eastern kingdoms that refers to the White Lady as Elune barring random trips from the night elves to help their cousins, during the troll wars for example.
The race/class combos were meant to represent what an average level 1 nobody would have access to in their racial homeland. So they were things that were culturally appropriate.
It wasn’t that an orc couldn’t go off to the Argent Dawn and learn to paladin, it’s that a level 1 nobody orc in Durotar didn’t have the access or the means to access paladin trainers because it’s not part of orcish culture.
That’s basically been all completely thrown out at this point and the reason we don’t have all races for all classes is mostly just Blizzard being slow with making the individual race art for druid forms, shaman totems, and paladin mounts.