I am glad the gate keepers have slowly been made wrong over time.
I don’t get the obsession about locking things based on race. As if locking things from a Race makes some grand cultural statement…
Even in the case of the Night Elves and mages…. There are literally Night Elf Mages in existence who practiced the Arcane prior to the new regime.
How have they been made wrong? How do you “make” someone be wrong?
You referencing one of the worst heritage quests in the game? That people disliked because it was so against everything night elves stand for?
Well, i think you miss the spot here, its as if, centuries ago, you had a lot of wemen that had the rights that you told me they did not have in the “lore of america” thats my point.
Having new things that say the Night Elves progressively let female practice druidism, why not, but retconing it into “it always was a thing” thats well, yes a retcon which remove a cultural aspect of the race, and no matter if you liek it or not, it was a cultural aspect of said race : And yes, the Nght Elves were a matriarcal system its how it was sold as in war3.
Removing that aspect, is just removing a part of their culutre, and its same reason why i am dam afraid naga become playable, because they will also lose that matriarcal aspect if it happen.
Yea, that quest was literally saying like “ho yeah, well, you see, the Night elves being culturally different? well let them be just like any others because…well you know their culture is not inclusive so we will make them like all the ohers”
And here we are getting to a point : Culture and differences are what makes races somewhat unique, if we make everyone having the same culture and way to work for the sake of being more “we accept all!” well i think its kinda harm what made them “special” in the frist place.
Very well put. Thank you.
cultures are not monolithic and races are not all part of a singular hivemind
You can keep saying little buzzwords, but they ignore the actual argument being made.
they are not buzzwords. i am sorry if you do not understand what they mean. for your sake i will explain them in words you might understand:
people apart of one culture do not believe and act the exact same way. every white, black, asian, latino, etc person do not think, act, or believe in the same way. even in a fantasy setting, where you are expected to roleplay, this is unrealistic and nonsensical.
You are talking about roleplay. You can do whatever you want with roleplay. I understand people wanting to play what they want.
My stance is, just because you want something, doesn’t mean you should have it. I would never tell someone they can’t or shouldn’t be X, Y, or Z, but I can say that diluting a race’s defining culture for the sake of gameplay does dilute the world on the whole.
I USED to have this stance, but my opinion on it changed. While I think some of the lore for some of the classes would (should) cause societies to ban them (Warlocks and Shadow Priests) I dont think most of WoW’s classes should be restricted to just the race they originate in, like the one you are playing.
Cultures mesh and share ways of life all the time.
They pretty much were that on Day One of the MMORG about the only thing that distinguishes one race from the other are the spaces they live in.
If only it was well made, yes, culture are not monolithic, but its never like “ho we will progressivly do a change” its either retconed into being “always like this” or its terribly made like in the heritage quest, when 3 night elves decide to change the culture.
Yes, but as i explain, its badly handled, if you had actually explaiantions and beleivable events that would happens to take such big decision to make the culture evolve then ok.
Again, i have no problem with culture evolving and all, and having individual be their own things, but either way :
1 - You make the culture changes in a beleivable way
2 - You precise that the individual are different
None of that is done.
Yes, because it qas MMORPG and it came with its probleems, or more like : it could have not been a problem if it was adressed in lore, but it was not.
You are correct about cultures meshing, but it doesn’t have to be that way in a fantasy setting. I get for gameplay they’re letting all races be all classes, and yeah, there are outliers in every culture.
My personal preference is for that culture to be elevated over the outliers.
I agree, while i get the feeling and the arguement of “ho but cultures are not monolithic” yes, they are not, but cultures takes very very very long to change, and for that to happen, it often takes a big event.
And, even if they “are not monolithic” the thing is, making them all evolve to be at the end …the same, by making them all be accepting the same things…its a bit meh.
I mean, the headcanon theory that many others and myself accepted from another thread (during Legion at the time) – was that we had all gathered artifacts from multiple timelines & alternate universes — So that we’d ultimately defeat the Legion throughout the multiverse. 
I think that’s more of a gameplay element than a class lore thing though
That being said 
with certain main characters there’s various aesthetics added or removed onto them in spite of their class, which tend sto happen often — Whether it’s Thrall having some mild warrior traits, Anduin being a paladin “priest” wearing plate & holding a two-handed sword, Vol’Jin being a hunter-priest-shaman and so on, lol
I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re things that “break the lore” either — as in their own rightful sense of sorts they generally remain consistent and they’re more characteristics heralded upon the individual themselves.
Wellll, i prefer not to start with the alternative timeline and all that jazz haha, to be honest, warcraft was very good without needing to add alternative timelines
But well, its still headcanon…so its ok
Well, then why is it in a novel? Thats my problem (and a lot of novels are written like this since a while now, making “gameplay” references in a lore book is terrible…)
Thats my point, when you see that wow classes, are trying with more of less succes to embodies war3 classes but when you look deeper you notice that more that wow classes are more like big boxes when they literally pout many classes from war3.
Like for example, what was a farseer, a shadow hunter, a witch doctor, a shaman, ended up being : a shaman but not entirely because in the case of shadow hunter…its also a bit of a priest…
And then you have the warrior, which people claim is the blademaster class; i dont agree with them but whatever…
Its the problem with wow classes, and why they should not be “canon” in term of naming, what i mean by that is, well, i rather want them to use term like witch doctors in lore than shamans when it come to a troll that used an hex. But in novels they will say its a shaman…
I dont know if you get my issue with all that haha
Just going off the last fifty or so posts, But it basically feels like in the race to homogenize the races so they can access every class in therefore improve player customization, Blizzard has basically done absolutely nothing to integrate upon the culture of these new classes coming to the races like they used to with shamans and paladins.
Unintentional strippings of racial culture without anything to fill in what was taken away.
Smells like wizard of the coast.
well that’s the thing: we know for sure that not every class is considered respectable or honorable in every culture. most of the spiritual cultures consider death knights (and darkfallen in the case of nelves, belves, and velves) an abomination/outright rejected (despite their transformation occurring through no fault of their own), dhs are shunned, warlocks are universally shunned, shadow priests are shunned, though unlike warlock/dk/dh, shamans and paladins are respected members of their respective societies and what some might consider an aspirational goal. also, in universe it has been about 15 years which is a pretty long time in terms of cultural osmosis. i don’t think it’s that unreasonable all things considered for things like that to be happening.
15 years ago in 2010 people were just starting to get more and more online. i’d say there’s been a cultural shift of titanic proportions, at least in the west, due to more interest/access to the internet, computers, and social media.
I mean the expansion ‘Legion’ followed right after an alternate-timeline expansion of ‘WoD’ — So it felt like a good tie-in to suggest:
And somewhat justifies the many various players holding the same artifact ‘Unique’ weapons 
That’s what I’m saying though — It’s a case by case basis. Suggesting one results to all just opens up a whole other array of issues.
I still don’t think that justifies to making all races have all classes.
Using the reasoning that classes don’t really matter for overall notions towards limiting an individual’s:
— then you may as well just remove the whole selection process of ‘Classes’ altogether and make them a massive blend-mesh when you can simply just cherry pick what you want from each class into your character … But that’d be silly, both in gameplay AND in lore.
People should have been wizer and consider that wod was a bad lore expansion and should have done as if it dod not happen. That expac nearly killed wow.
I would say, thats not even the actual issue, that people have many versions of the artefact its gameplay thing, the problem imo is to have given said legendary weapons to players and you can see just now why it was a mistakes : Look how, back before Legion, people were excited about Ashbringer, it was an iconic weapon and legendary and peoples were excited about it : Now…who cares? Since Legion ended the weapon is not even mentioned in much threads anymore, the weapon just lost its “Legendary” aura.
Same with Doomhammer, it was Thrall’s weapon, now people want Thrall to have it back, but its in the hands of the players now…and the weapon is still refered by players as “the legendary weapon of Orgrim and Thrall” the player is totally not relevant here.
You get what want to say? Its why i hate Legion, and its only one of the points of why i hate Legion (another point is well…the legion, because the legion in legion is a joke, like you literlaly kill high ranking member of the legion as soon as you get your frist artefact, so bascially the very frist quests…)
I mean, do you imagne if you read Lotr book and you had like “Ganalf used a spell, and that spell hit all the orcs in a radius of 10y!” i dont feel like i read a novel here, but more like a game manual…
Oh but i never said that, i just said that, we should not think of classes in a “lore basis” but more a gameplay one.
I think we sadly did not understand each other on that part, i did not want to say “lore of classes dont really matter so classes can be to any races” i more wanted to say, that we should get out of the “shaklces” of wow classes and stop thinking that for example x or y character is x or y classes because it used x or y spell.
Its not even about being honorable or culturally accepted, its not even about that really : its about having lore explainations : like do you know the lore behind tauren mages? Well me neither because they did not bother giving any…
And even more terrible is : the only tauren mages they actually introduced you to was Kirin Tor tauren mages as if the turens were not able to have their own cultural mages…and that tauren mages end up being in purple human robes…thats how bad it is.
And by the way, there is a big opposition to “cultural diversity” = confirmism, and the problem is, that the approach to introducing new classes to races is made with a conformism pov…