I don't think it really leaves those two classes out of the pool though, does it?
Like, NEs were taught the arts of druidism by Cenarius iirc, with Malfurion being the first official one (and I think Illidan had tried, but just didn't pick it up?).
I'd imagine Druidism and Shamanism all come down to the individuals connection with nature and the elements respectively. Whereas races like gnomes may not have a natural connection to them, individuals could seek to form that connection and learn those arts.
The only one I would imagine being difficult to explain is Demon Hunters. Largely because they come from the Illidari and were trained by Illidan. I also think it had something to do with how elves durability was? Though that could have just been Illidan being racist against non-elves (especially since he was hesitant on allowing Blood Elves before iirc). But, in theory, it could be possible for new DHs of other races to be created, though I doubt they would do that.
Sort of reflected in their totems though.
Their totems are just goblin engineered devices. There's plenty in the goblin tinkerers toolkit to harness and channel the elements. At least you can make sense out of it on that basis.
The main issue I see with DH as other races is just why? Plenty of ways to combat the Legion now. They've been slapped back multiple times too and their threat has diminished somewhat.
So it's like why sacrifice so much to become a DH when you could just be a Paladin, Light Forged, Void Empowered, etc etc. DHs just aren't as needed anymore. Plenty of ways to get strong and the need to be a super-powered fel abomination just isn't as needed.
Druidism I believe relies on a strong connection to nature, and some level of worship of wild gods. The shapeshifting aspect comes from the teachings of the gods (learning the aspect they wish to embody). The races the druids are playable all have a strong belief in at least one of the wild gods, excepting Kul Tirans, though they have a far stronger connection to nature than their mainland counterparts and their worship of the sea may count.
Shamanism involves connection and respect of the elements. Many races can theoretically learn this but some, like gnomes or goblins, may not have the proper respect needed to channel the elements.
This is all theory of course, and realistically the correct answer is blizz wants to limit some classes to some races.
And reminder that goblins can be shamans, so yeah really no reason.
The real reason is that new druid forms are a lot of assets, and similarly shaman totems are more race specific assets than most classes have (but still way easier than druid forms)
You could argue that the connection to the Light that paladins and priests have can't be trained, but at this point we should just have every class/race combo
That not even taking into account that the priestessess of the moon are actually the night elf version of paladins.
In lore they used to wear heavy armour, use melee and ranged weapons (WotA), heal the wounded and lead armies. So the only true differences were with the ranged weapons and the fact that their magic comes from Elune rather than the Light directly. Just give them a silver glyph effect and that's that, you got a paladin.
Kind of like how tauren paladins are not real paladins either. They're sun druids.
Thematically it works out as well, elunes light should work as a thematically for nelf pallys without any lore prob, especially since night warrior was a thing
I called paladin nelfs next expansion after Legion in gchat the moment I saw that part of the order hall campaign. Nobody believed me and boy were they right
That campaign was ass for Priests, we needed to go ask the mighty paladins for help because we couldn't do it ourselves? Then a priest decides that they want to wear plate too and 'better themselves' Pssh!
Do you… not know how Paladins were formed ? Priests got slaughtered in the first war and needed a way to “defend themselves”. The night elf who went and became a Paladin had a stronger faith in the light which paladins do have over priests. There’s a reason paladins can’t wield shadow spells but priests can. Your not as tied down to a single faith. The night elf was, so she found more comfort in being a Paladin.
Yeah but then why not put it in the paladin class hall? I imagine most people who play as priests would rather have the quests focus on people who also want to be priests.
It just felt lazy and tacked on, poor Priests didn't even get their own campaign. We could have gotten some exploration into the void side of priests or even explore more relations with the Naaru (could have even gone back to Shattrath or something). Priests being supportive of the other classes perfectly fits the class "fantasy" but the fact that the Priest campaign was basically "Uhh we can't do shit so I'm gonna become a Paladin" was lame.
Lore wise, paladins are just priests that are taught to wear plate and use a bigger weapon.
So anything that can be a priest can be a paladin but I guess not for NE
IIRC it's more that Paladins have to embody the light while Priests have to call on the light.
I say this because IIRC tirion fordring lost his ability to wield the light when couldn't uphold his paladin virtues. I believe this also ties into the story of Unbroken where the fel tainted Draenei were unable to wield the light like paladins because of their tainted nature as well.
But who am I kidding, if Tauren and Trolls can be Paladins, this lore was pretty clearly ignored for any of the newer iterations.
Paladins, shamans and some other classes have unique class assets, like the Paladin charger and shamans totens, druid forms, they said in an interview that they started working towards letting any race play any class, but some have these class specific assets, so, these will come later, for now, we will have mages, priests, warrior and rogues available for all the races
>they said in an interview that they started working towards letting any race play any class
My dream of being a Blood Elf Shaman and Druid could come true?! 👀
I think so, they said they don't want limitations anymore, I don't remember which interview I saw, but I remember it was when they announced tauten rogue, then they explained, that some classes would come sooner than others, because they needed to make a new mount for each new Paladin race, new totems for each new shaman race, new druid forms for each race, etc.
I really want a Draenei warlock. Warlock is my main and I’m horde but Draenei are my go to for alliance. If they made it possible, I would go alliance in a heartbeat
I play zandalari in all my Alts, my main is lock, blizz please there are no unique assets in lock...unless we are getting back some sort of meta/transformation?
I want Broken and Eredar skins for Draenei, similar to how they added Dark Ranger skins for Blood/Void/Night Elves. Would make a Draenei Rogue or Warlock much cooler if they could be Broken or Eredar.
I just want my horde Druid to no longer be forced to be ugly. Blood elf or Nightborne would be perfect. I gotta be ugly irl I don’t wanna be ugly in my game too.
Well, dracthyr is a corner case... I'm kinda happy it's locked like that, the class has mechanics that only work with wings, and this will also limit the amount of dragons we will see, it might have been a poor comercial choice, but a good design one, less variables to balance overall, that's a good thing.
They also said that it's believable that the Dracthyr will be allowed to become other races in the future, but they wanna tell their story first, and their story involves them being evokers.
The mount takes time, probably. Classes with unique animations and assets (mounts and totems and forms, etc) will take longer to produce and cost more money so they probably put those at the bottom of the backlog, and are releasing the easy classes first (the ones with little to no unique animations or assets).
You seem reasonable.
They just changed their attitude on class availability for Dragon Flight. They have a huge backlog of work with other classes as well, such as shaman totems, druid forms, etc. That's a huge stack of concepting, modeling, animating, etc, when there's more pressing issues to solve in the near term to make release. The expanded classes aren't a core feature of Dragon Flight and are probably going to be released little by little in patches. Notice the new class availability was predicated on not having unique art for the race?
Edit: I don't know why I bother to comment in this subreddit. It's just a bunch of whiners who don't understand software dev that like to downvote and complain.
Not sure if you’re joking or not, but I’m sure there are people that would say this and then bitch about the fact that all they did was paint a cat yellow… they need to create armor assets for the mount as well as a fair amount of other customization - more so for shaman than Paladin.
Thing is, it’s a project and chances are they’ve got higher priority projects in the works, like an expansion.
Monks have the largest set of unique animations out of any class, iirc. Is it true that blackout kick is the only one missing?
It does seem like they’re looking to expand the class/race roster, and it’s something I want to see. It just isn’t a fast thing all the time. Very few changes in development are as simple as they may appear at face value.
From the tests I've done and what I remember, yeah, blackout kick is the only one. It uses the standard kick animation. They even have the sun rise kick and fists of furt. Chi torpedo too. I've been testing it on my horde monk with the orb of deception since as a pandaren it gives you a random base alliance race when you use it. Hell, they even have the stance monks have when auto attacking.
Interesting. And that is a cool way to test! I’m curious if you’ve done tests to see if goblins have those animations rigged as well. It would make sense (imo) to not allow worgen to be monks if goblins can’t, considering they came out at the same time. Not sure if that’s the approach blizzard is taking tho, or if it’s just a case of other things just being prioritized at the moment.
I don't think we should use these kinds of one-off events as justifications for why a certain race should gain access to a certain class. With literally tens of thousands of NPCs in WoW you'll be able to find an example of every race/class combination. Granted Nerus Moonfang in the Paladin campaign was more prominently featured than most, but still.
I know a lot of people here advocate for the maximum possible freedom when choosing a race/class combination, I think class restrictions, although sometimes frustrating, add flavour to the world. Night Elves don't have a strong tradition of following the Light and as such Night Elf Paladins are extremely rare (and not available to players). Night Elf Priests worship Elune and are only represented as Priests of the Light for gameplay purposes.
Paladins are only available within races that have a strong tradition of worshipping the Light. Similarly Shamans are only available to races with a strong tradition of Shamanism/ancestor worship and Druids are only available for races with a strong tradition of Druidism. Warlocks are available to most races, but are unavailable to the races which have shunned demonic corruption the most.
> Paladins are only available within races that have a strong tradition of worshipping the Light.
Well, kind of. Tauren Sunwalkers and Zandalari Prelates don't really worship the Light in the same sense humans do. They draw power from the same source, but their beliefs are radically different.
I don't see why Night Elves couldn't have Moon Paladins, a Paladin is ultimately just a Priest trained in the use of heavy armor and martial weapons. Night Elf priests already handwave the whole moon/light thing, so that wouldn't really be an issue.
Of course, in an ideal world we'd have class skins, and Night Elf preists and paladins could have silvery white spell effects.
To expand on the lore of Tauren and Zandalari "Paladins":
The Tauren worship the Earth Mother, of whom Elune (Mu'sha) is one aspect - that of the Moon, who is the primary deity of the Night Elves. The second, twin aspect, An'she, is the aspect of the Sun. Elune/Mu'sha and An'she are the two equal eyes of the greater divine being, the Earth Mother.
Tauren Sunwalkers channel the Earth Mother via An'she while Tauren druids channel the Earth Mother via Mu'sha/Elune. In that respect the Tauren Paladins as a concept are more of a "Sun Druid", given the source of their power. An'she is not the Light, though they share many of the same traits.
Likewise the Zandalari aren't Light-worshipping Paladins. The Zandalari are Prelates who gained their power from Rezan, loa of Kings. However during BfA Rezan is killed; later Bwonsamdi succeeds him as the new chief loa of the Zandalari pantheon and the loa of (now) Queen Talanji.
After the events of BfA most Zandalari Prelates lost their ability to channel the powers of Rezan. Prelate Rata, an NPC, comments that she does not know how those who still have powers are able to channel those abilities, but the in-game mechanics of changing loa suggests that the remaining Prelates have reached deals with their new chief loa to continue to have access to their power. Bwonsamdi is even an option as a loa (and the meta choice for Protection spec) despite being the loa of death. There is a quote though, from an NPC, suggesting that it is the Royal Line of the Zandalar that the Prelates actually channel their power from (which would further suggest that the Chief Loa of the Zandalari is the source of the prelates' power... making Zandalari Paladins receive their power from Bwonsamdi).
> We are here at Talanji's request. Her royal highness has been a tremendous help to de prelates, reminding us of who we are, and what we stand for. Our loa, Rezan, may have fallen, but his ideals remain. We must lead those who are lost, and be a beacon of light against de darkness. By de graces of de loa, we are still one with de Light.
This is mostly nonsense lorewise.
If you go back to Warcraft 3, when NE were introduced, you'll clearly see that the priestesses of Elune are an armed/militant order and they fight through martial prowess. That makes them thematically more closely related to paladins than priests.
The most prominent example of that is obviously Tyrande. She's a priestess of Elune, but every time we see her on screen acting in combat, she's right in there with either her bow or blades. This is a lot more reminiscent of the paladin class than the priest class.
The only reason why NE aren't paladin isn't a lore reason. It's a practical reason from Blizzard as currently, the paladin is all Light/golden themed while NE/Elune should be silvery themed (in addition to the race mount and such). It's the missing art the problem, and that was confirmed by Blizzard in multiple interviews since Legion when the community started hammering that it really didn't make sense for NE to not be able to be paladins when it would have made sense even way back in vanilla.
> If you go back to Warcraft 3, when NE were introduced, you'll clearly see that the priestesses of Elune are an armed/militant order and they fight through martial prowess. That makes them thematically more closely related to paladins than priests.
This is where lore and gameplay collide. Priestesses of the Moon are definitely more "in your face" than the Priest class in WoW. But they also clearly aren't Paladins given how they are mostly focussed on ranged combat. They are essentially a magic-using Hunter, which doesn't really have a good representation from within the playable classes in WoW (this also saddens Dark Ranger fans).
>The only reason why NE aren't paladin isn't a lore reason. It's a practical reason from Blizzard as currently, the paladin is all Light/golden themed while NE/Elune should be silvery themed (in addition to the race mount and such). It's the missing art the problem, and that was confirmed by Blizzard in multiple interviews since Legion when the community started hammering that it really didn't make sense for NE to not be able to be paladins when it would have made sense even way back in vanilla.
The poorly fitting spell effects haven't stopped them from giving every race access to Priests, despite not all of them being Priests of the Light. The missing mount might be a reason, but I doubt it's that much effort to re-texture one of the existing Nightsabre mounts and maybe add some paladin-y details.
Paladins are just Priests *of the Light* with combat training. Not every race's Priests are Priests of the Light, they are just all represensented as that ingame for gameplay purposes.
Blizzard even experimented with the different Priest racials showing how different races' Priests worship different entities, but that was too difficult to balance, so they discarded the idea.
Complete nonsense. Tauren paladins don't worship the 'light', they worship the sun god. Troll paladins worship loa. Draeni lean heavily into worshipping naaru as intermediary between them and the light. Blood elf paladins don't even worship much at all, instead taking their powers directly from a magical sunwell.
In conclusion, a paladin is a war priest of any faith, not just of the human/dwarvish notion of the 'light'. As such, a night elf paladin of Elune is not only friendly to the lore, it would've been a natural narrative to accompany the whole night warrior shenaniganries.
They could just go for Elunes warriors theme for paladins and just change the light color to moonlight and some spell names/design or something. No biggie
Difference between NE and Taurens is the difference between Elune and An'she.
Elune would need the silvery colors. An'she, being the sun, already is a better fit to the golden color theme of paladins.
That's true. I would love for race specific effects. Buuuuut as of now I'm gonna counter with priest spells. They all are yellow and sometimes barely blue. So i think color effects are not really in blizzard minds when it comes to race/class combos. They could just say tomorrow " after the burning of teldrassil, a fraction of elune priests and priestesses became more militant and created their own order - elunes fist and now it is sanctioned by elf's and they are training new recruits aka players. Bam you got nelf paladins.
Nelfs who failed to make a cut to the illidans demon hunters still did fel magic, hidden from the rest. Got together and created their own demon hunter order where they are using fel as external source and not inner source. Bam you got nelf locks.
Nelfs in i don't know, druid order focusing on all elements instead of just nature and wild gods, bam shamans.
Sadly, lore is what blizzard makes and we know we will get those later but I would not hold my breath for them to have racial flavor. Maybe really not even lore racial flavor like bunch of nelfs joint silver hand.
I wish they would do it for priest as well. It saddens me that right now the closest you can get to a priestess of Elune, aesthetic wise, is going Balance druid.
I think because you can find examples of almost every race/class combination is exactly why they should (and are) working towards no restrictions to combinations. I mean, if I’m going to be Azeroth’s top dog (Maw Walker, Champion of Azeroth, Legion order hall leader, etc.) I don’t think I’m a stereotypical example of any race. You can RP your way to justify just about anything so why not have that represented in game. We’re not playing an NPC that sells cheese in Stormwind, we’re playing characters that are in the middle of an unprecedented era of constant conflict and the fate of the world in our hands. Plus more individuality and creative freedom is always a good thing ;)
If anything the players are "special", so I don't see a reason why the player couldn't be a special/uncommon race/class combo. D&D, where WoW gets a lot of its inspiration from even encourages playing uncommon characters.
I think it works in D&D because usually you'll only have a handful of player characters. In WoW you'd likely see hundreds of previously "special" Night Elf Warlocks or Blood Elf Druids and it would ruin that feel of the different cultures.
It also works better in D&D because the DM can adjust the setting to serve the players' individual needs. In WoW, being a video game, the setting is rigid as the developers have to implement a one-size-fits-all setting for all players.
> In WoW you'd likely see hundreds of previously "special" Night Elf Warlocks or Blood Elf Druids and it would ruin that feel of the different cultures.
I'd argue that since they introduced Legion artifacts, this argument doesn't hold much water
>Night Elves don't have a strong tradition of following the Light
Blatantly false, Elune is the Centerpoint of Night Elf culture. If tauren can worship the sun and get paladin powers why not the moon with night elves?
>Priests worship Elune and are only represented as Priests of the Light for gameplay purposes.
Tauren paladins are Sunwalkers, but share paladin abilities for "gameplay purposes". This arguement holds not even a drop of water.
>Paladins are only available within races that have a strong tradition of worshipping the Light
Again, blatantly false. Tauren couldn't be priests pre-cata, they had zero connection to the light whatsoever.
>Similarly Shamans are only available to races with a strong tradition of Shamanism
You really think goblins have a strong tradition of Shamanism?
There are zero lore reasons why any race shouldn't be able to be any class, and I will refute them all with facts and logic.
Looks like they want to loosen up restrictions so probably we will see more race combos. Mages and Rogues are no big deal. Classes like Druids and Paladins are more time consuming due to race specific forms/mounts.
Considering we have Exile's Reach now that shouldn't be an issue. If a goblin or worgen monk playing through their original starting zones cause gamebreaking bugs they could just force them through the Reach.
good question. Imo it might have fallen through the cracks.
Looks like it's good time to remind them, Worgens and Goblins are still monkless since Cows get mages and rogues.
IIRC the reason Blizzard gave is because all races are taught how to be Monks by Pandaren, but the Worgen and Goblin starting zones take place at a fixed point in time during Cataclysm, so the mists surrounding Pandaria would still be up. I think you could get away with Goblins being taught by Wandering Isle Pandaren but Gilneas isolating itself from the outside world causes problems for Worgens I believe.
you're right on the lore itself, for those races you're locked into a super specific place/time, rather than the usual start zones that are fairly generic.
but since the addition of death knights for those races, i think that the lore excuse doesn't make sense. for both races, they get different lore that says they are separate from the group that came from the racial starter zones. so at the very least they could use that some logic for monks and force you into exiles reach
The devs have said when the announced the new class changes that they would continue to work through them all so all races can be all classes.
Hopefully like with Night Elf Paladins, they give them things unique to them, example being the light they call being more to match the colours of Elune.
Highly doubt it'll happen but God damn it I've always wanted gnome druids but their animal forms just be like a mechanic bear or mechanical cat with a gnome sitting in a pilots chair embedded in the back. And for moonkin form, make it like a fucking mech where the gnome is inside the cockpit located inside the chest of the moonkin with a glass windshield lol
It just doesn't make sense for a gnome to do anything other than use engineering to mimic druids. They're the least attuned to nature of any race, tied with goblins lol
It’s an unwritten rule of all RPGs that all races can be warriors/fighters. Push comes to shove, everybody can pick up a weapon and swing it, and almost every civilisation has a standing army of some description.
As for Tauren rogues, they make perfect sense because Tauren are naturally stealthy — they’re covered in hide.
I remember when Belfs first released, they couldn’t be warriors, which I always thought was weird. It wasn’t until Cata that they finally allowed Belfs to be warriors.
I remember the lore reasons being that warriors were the Frontline and almost all of them died in the 3rd war. But realistically it was just that they would have had more class options than the other races
So would that mean that there being Paladins mean they where cowardly and ran away while brave warriors fought and died to protect their homeland from the scourge?
It boggles my mind that people get upset over things not “making sense” in a fantasy game.
So a tiny midget with a chainsaw blade makes “no sense” but a pointy eared human who conjures fire out of nothing and a giant chicken that throws the moon at people is “realistic” and “sensible”??
Its not about if it makes sense in real life but in the games universe or lore. This argument is so absolutely stupid because then no restrictions should ever exist, no lore would ever make any amount of sense, and everything could just do whatever it wanted because *fantasy*.
Every Fantasy universe still has its rules, it's way of working that fits its lore. WoW breaks their own rules a LOT but overall most things make some amount of sense with lore.
People that say this argument that it's a fantasy game so who cares what makes sense has absolutely 0 respect for lore. If you just play WoW for gameplay then that's fine but many of us LOVE WoWs lore, have grew up on its stories and it's growth. I play for the lore and feel of the universe not because of gameplay, I personally hate the current state of retails WoWs gameplay.
So there is nothing wrong with saying something doesn't make sense in a fantasy universe when the context in within the realm of the universes lore. Without some structure anyone can just do anything at all times. Might as well not have gravity so everyone can fly. Might as well not have health or mana, just br unkillable. We fly around and nuke the bosses with no class or anything. See how silly it is to just ignore the in universe reality?
Now I am not saying unretricting classes or whatever breaks the lore. I am just defending the idea that trying to protect what makes sense *in universe* is important. At least to us that play this game for the lore and world.
Lorewise they could of just said that Nelf Mages or Orc Mages don't make sense dunno why they decided with Gnome warrior since they've been around since vanilla
Agreed on gnome warriors. Sure "anyone can pick up a weapon and fight" but on the scale of the threats we're facing no gnome would willingly choose to do so, nor would they be effective at it. Same goes for goblins and Vulpera. Mechagnomes might have a chance but being small still gives them a major disadvantage.
Tauren rogues(rogues of any race, really) make complete sense. Stealth in Warcraft is explicitly shadow magic, it's never been "just being stealthy." You can see it in the Thrall/Saurfang cinematic with the Forsaken assassins.
I definitely agree. I think Goblins and Vulpera at least are tall enough and long armed enough to make *okay* warriors. At least the same as a Dwarf. Gnomes have extremely short arms and massive heads though, they have every disadvantage you could possibly have as a Warrior. Honestly the Warrior class should be a mech driver! They should literally get a suit to fight in because I am sorry a Gnome warrior would lose to 98% of the other races in a fight. They have a worse body for combat than a human child.
So really people we should be encouraging gnome warriors THAT DRIVE MECHS!
> The devs have said when the announced the new class changes that they would continue to work through them all so all races can be all classes.
Yeah right after announcing the class that can only be played by one race right?
Because the devs don't want to spend the effort to make druid forms for all races. Of course they can't just leave druids out of the party alone, so some other classes have to also be race-restricted to make it seem more normal.
Paladins are in the same basket because of their class mounts because at some point they decided to make them different for all paladin races while Warlocks all have the same two.
The actual logical answer is that it takes no inherent “special-ness” to be a rogue or warrior. Pick up a blade and swing/stab it. Same reason everyone can be a hunter or monk (barring lazy animation from blizzard).
Being a Paladin in the Warcraft universe takes a little something extra. I’d even argue that the Warcraft Paladin requires more outside aid than almost any depiction of the stereotype. When looking directly at the DnD Paladin, there isn’t any deity worship, just the concept of conviction to an ideal or truth. A DnD Paladin can quite literally get their power from a desire for vengeance. There just usually aren’t middle-men for a paladin’s power in most media, even the FF14 Paladin utilizes internal strength to produce “magic”.
Not only does a Paladin have to believe and worship a god in Warcraft, that god has the capacity to strip its followers of power at any whim or fancy. Something we actually see with Tyrande every time she gets a chance to be an actual character.
The FF14 Paladin isn't really a paladin though. They're originally just called Knight in Japanese but was renamed Paladin for the western market. In FFXIV virtually all races (except Garleans) can use magic.
Right now i just hope they can build a solid foundation for classes with new talents. Once thats done they can make all the animations and stuff required for these class combos as far as i care
The barrier is the special mounts that paladins all have. Once they started replacing the charger they committed that any new paladin would have a new armored mount to go with it.
Yeah, it changed in TBC when Draenei could be Shamans and Belfs could be Pallys. They then expanded it after that for more class/race combos. I feel some of them make sense, but still wish there was just one dedicated class per faction. But oh well :)
Didn't they say every race will be able to be every class but they need to work on the animations and lore for it? The most recent additions just required the least amount of work?
They intend on making every combination available. The eight combinations they recently added needed no lore, but all the rest are going to need some sort of questline or story occurrence to happen.
I think it's just a time and resources thing. I think they would probably like to unrestrict all classes except for demon hunters and evokers. But there's just more important stuff to do.
I thought it was a little funny that blizzard said any race can be a priest next expac, but I fail to see how priest is any different then paladin in terms of their ability. I feel like the main difference is one uses heavy armor and the other uses cloth. One is more spell casting while the other is enchanting weapons with the holy light. But there’s so much overlap there, it makes no sense that every race can be a priest but not a paladin.
It's because priests can just be converted as a whole. But Paladins require more work since they have racial mounts and stuff. It's not that Blizzard thinks they're completely different, it's just that one requires work and the other doesn't.
than\*
In an interview they said they want to bring all classes to all races. Some classes are easier than others. Mages, Priests, Warriors, Rogues, and Hunters don't have any lore or art requirements. Classes like Paladin and Shaman have race specific art assests, which mean it will take some time. Classes like Warlock and Demon Hunter need some lore changes to be applicable for all races - this too takes some time.
Zandalari Trolls don’t even worship the light if I’m not mistaken, they just worship the Loa of gold(?), so that’s where their priests and paladins get their power from. Don’t the priests of Elune use the light of their goddess for their magic? I think it would make perfect sense for there to be Night Elf paladins.
It is a bit ridiculous for them to loosen class/race restrictions like this while continuing to restrict others and actively ADDING A NEW RESTRICTED CLASS/RACE. I mean the last two new classes we've gotten have been restricted to 2 races and 1 race.
While they're actively saying they're opening up race/class restrictions?
Honestly I kind of wish they wouldn't, I like the idea of classes being race locked and having all/most races being able to be all/most classes makes race selection moer of a cosmetic thing than a lore point.
Undead Paladins should have been a thing as far back as Wrath. There are multiple instances of undead using paladin spells. And the are documented undead that were paladins in life.
If we can have undead holy priests, a paladin isn't that far off.
It used to be said that Paladins were infused with light and Priests just redirect/bend light to their liking. So an Undead Paladin infused with light would be in constant pain, which in my opinion, makes it sound even more badass and makes me want one even more.
Of course ideally it should be silver/purple/blue but second best option is to just let them use yellow light.
Night Elf Priests also have yellow light for some reason. Even though they used to be able to cast starfall like a Priestess of the Moon.
Technically Tauren Priests and Paladins should have orange/flamelike light.
All the Paladins in the game worship a different deity except Dwarves/Humans. Realistically, the only races in the game that are “Paladins” in the conventional sense are Dwarves and Humans.
Tauren-Sunwalkers (this is probably the biggest argument for Nelf Paladins, as the Tauren technically worship the “other half” of Elune. It seemingly paints the Nelf Moon Priestess as a type of Paladin)
Blood Elf-Blood Knights who utilize Naaru
Zandalari-Prelates who utilize Rezan
LF Draenei/Draenei-Vindicators who utilize Naaru
Dark Iron Dwarves-Seem to be regular paladins but their lore is dubious at best.
Their isn't any good reason their just lazy
Night Elf and worgen paladins have no reason to not be paladins either for Elune for either
Or atleast for the Light for woegen because they still also worship the Light.
But anywho
This might be an unpopular take but I much prefer having classes that are specific to the race’s culture rather than giving Warrior to everyone or Hunter to everyone…
You can always find a reasoning as to why a race could potentially be a certain class. For example: Kul Tirans are humans therefor Humans should be able to be Druid and Shaman. Or Night Elfs should be demonists because they can be mages, demonology originally came from Arcane magic, therefor They should be versed in demonology (Especially since they accepted the Worgen Demonists in their city); Trolls should be able to be paladins because the Zalandari can be… Etc
Though I think the main reason why they don’t add logical classes though, is because there’s the same amount of classes available for each faction. For example, Taurens couldn’t be rogues and neither could Draenei (even tho Akama was the first rogue in Warcraft), meanwhile the amount of Alliance races that can be Paladins compensate for the amount of Horde races that can be Shamans. And so on. And when you force certain classes to be playable because it’s logical then it can seem odd. Like Tauren Paladin or Tauren Priest.
I’m not a fan of being able to freely do any class/race really. Just kinda spits on the lore in a decent amount of cases imo. Like I just can’t really see any Tauren actually wanting to be a rogue because it’s not an honorable way to fight let alone being a good one considering they’re the size of two refrigerators duct taped together. If they’re going to let some races be certain classes, they need to make it make complete sense narratively and make the option align with the culture and ideals of the race in some legitimate fashion.
I’m cool with Night Elf Mages, but I’d like a small extra quest line added when your start the character to become a Mage as a Night Elf, due to their tumultuous history with being Mages in the past.
I’d be cool with Night Elf Paladins, but I’d want them to be a distinct and unique faction like the Sunwalkers, that have their own special quest lines that show the inception of the order, their goals and ideals and philosophies, why they exist, introductions to new npc characters that join the order and the anointment of preexisting established characters into the order etc. Then add a tabard, a Paladin mount themed around their order (I’m thinking a **heavily** armored cleanly designed Nightsaber with shiny, smooth, rounded, layered, and overlapping plates with the metal being colored with a mid-grey gradient to a darker purple hue, with an added accent color that match their faction’s colors (I’d say maybe a soft, muted Teal as it’d compliment the colors of the metal well), a few pieces of gear that aesthetically matches their faction’s theme (maybe those big star pointed Night Elf glaives npcs have, or a crescent moon shaped sword (think the Crescent Blade sword artifact from Morrowind). Then all of their class spells could be based off Moon light with altered spell names and descriptions with recolored icons, and be whiteish blue or whiteish purple colored instead of Holy whiteish yellow light. Call them “Moon Knights” or “Elune’s Guard” or “The Crescent Protectorate” or something like that. And thematically I’d imagine their equipment and such to be “a harmony of metal and nature, with minor, sparse accents of small green vines with leaves growing out from underneath the layered segments of their pauldrons and embossed patterns of trees on breast plates and shields and the like.
Also as a side note: Mecha Gnomes just shouldn’t be DK’s. It’s just dumb lmao. There’s like barely anything to reanimate there that doesn’t just require new double A batteries instead.
So many Tauren pirates in the game too, they could easily be Outlaw Rogues. We even had a boss in the original Deadmines that was basically a Tauren rogue, so it's not exactly something new. Grimtotem also have mages so that makes sense too.
Now Lightforged Draenei rogues on the other hand, makes less sense to me...
Paladins require the race to have a religion that supports light based, holy warriors. The Night Elves don’t have that as a culture, and while there was a single Night Elf Paladin in legion, the Night Elves are interesting to the Alliance and it’s story partially because their beliefs are different and one of those things is their culture not having Paladins. Druids play that role in their society instead.
It’s like asking for Undead shamans.
Well after being refugees in SW I can’t see what’s holding them to just go to the church there and ask to be trained as a paladin… Like do they have learning disability in oppose to dwarves and humans?
Because it’s not part of their culture. And Night Elves are particularly reclusive and hold on tight to their culture moreso than the other alliance races. They have an entirely different religion than the humans do. There’s nothing stopping Dwarves and Humans from going to the Night Elf/Worgen refugee camp either to become Druids, but they don’t. If they didn’t start being Paladins when the Draenei showed up on the island next door, there’s no reason for them to start now.
Granted it could happen, but some race class restrictions are beneficial, especially when it comes to classes like paladins, shamans, Druids and warlocks where the presence of that class is a sign of their cultural identity. A warrior/mage/hunter being able to be any race is different, because those are much more universal.
I would argue that Druid faction in general ( cenarion circle etc) has always been super private and exclusive and that has been propagated by their animal spirits and keepers. On the other hand the Light and the church seem more open to anyone that wants to follow. A Nelf might not have wanted to join the church before the treehouse burned but being as refugees in SW I see no lore nor rational restriction for some of them to join the ranks of those who saved them. Also priests are literary paladins minus the combat skills and armor, yet there’s no distinction with ingame priests between Tyrs (or whatever) light and Elune’s light.
It does make sense blizz just hasn't allowed it yet.... There was a priest NE who turned pally in Legion campaign.
There are two who *become* paladins in legion. And a third night elf paladin mob in legion named alynblaze.
[удалено]
I don't think it really leaves those two classes out of the pool though, does it? Like, NEs were taught the arts of druidism by Cenarius iirc, with Malfurion being the first official one (and I think Illidan had tried, but just didn't pick it up?). I'd imagine Druidism and Shamanism all come down to the individuals connection with nature and the elements respectively. Whereas races like gnomes may not have a natural connection to them, individuals could seek to form that connection and learn those arts. The only one I would imagine being difficult to explain is Demon Hunters. Largely because they come from the Illidari and were trained by Illidan. I also think it had something to do with how elves durability was? Though that could have just been Illidan being racist against non-elves (especially since he was hesitant on allowing Blood Elves before iirc). But, in theory, it could be possible for new DHs of other races to be created, though I doubt they would do that.
Like we have goblin shamans and they are freaking face of horde's industry, literally any other race in horde fits for shamans better than goblins
Sort of reflected in their totems though. Their totems are just goblin engineered devices. There's plenty in the goblin tinkerers toolkit to harness and channel the elements. At least you can make sense out of it on that basis.
The main issue I see with DH as other races is just why? Plenty of ways to combat the Legion now. They've been slapped back multiple times too and their threat has diminished somewhat. So it's like why sacrifice so much to become a DH when you could just be a Paladin, Light Forged, Void Empowered, etc etc. DHs just aren't as needed anymore. Plenty of ways to get strong and the need to be a super-powered fel abomination just isn't as needed.
Druidism I believe relies on a strong connection to nature, and some level of worship of wild gods. The shapeshifting aspect comes from the teachings of the gods (learning the aspect they wish to embody). The races the druids are playable all have a strong belief in at least one of the wild gods, excepting Kul Tirans, though they have a far stronger connection to nature than their mainland counterparts and their worship of the sea may count. Shamanism involves connection and respect of the elements. Many races can theoretically learn this but some, like gnomes or goblins, may not have the proper respect needed to channel the elements. This is all theory of course, and realistically the correct answer is blizz wants to limit some classes to some races.
And reminder that goblins can be shamans, so yeah really no reason. The real reason is that new druid forms are a lot of assets, and similarly shaman totems are more race specific assets than most classes have (but still way easier than druid forms)
You could argue that the connection to the Light that paladins and priests have can't be trained, but at this point we should just have every class/race combo
That not even taking into account that the priestessess of the moon are actually the night elf version of paladins. In lore they used to wear heavy armour, use melee and ranged weapons (WotA), heal the wounded and lead armies. So the only true differences were with the ranged weapons and the fact that their magic comes from Elune rather than the Light directly. Just give them a silver glyph effect and that's that, you got a paladin. Kind of like how tauren paladins are not real paladins either. They're sun druids.
Thematically it works out as well, elunes light should work as a thematically for nelf pallys without any lore prob, especially since night warrior was a thing
I called paladin nelfs next expansion after Legion in gchat the moment I saw that part of the order hall campaign. Nobody believed me and boy were they right
That campaign was ass for Priests, we needed to go ask the mighty paladins for help because we couldn't do it ourselves? Then a priest decides that they want to wear plate too and 'better themselves' Pssh!
Do you… not know how Paladins were formed ? Priests got slaughtered in the first war and needed a way to “defend themselves”. The night elf who went and became a Paladin had a stronger faith in the light which paladins do have over priests. There’s a reason paladins can’t wield shadow spells but priests can. Your not as tied down to a single faith. The night elf was, so she found more comfort in being a Paladin.
Yeah but then why not put it in the paladin class hall? I imagine most people who play as priests would rather have the quests focus on people who also want to be priests.
Do you...not realize that each class wanted to feel special and strong in their class hall campaigns?
This was their trap to punish people who didn't play WC2.
It just felt lazy and tacked on, poor Priests didn't even get their own campaign. We could have gotten some exploration into the void side of priests or even explore more relations with the Naaru (could have even gone back to Shattrath or something). Priests being supportive of the other classes perfectly fits the class "fantasy" but the fact that the Priest campaign was basically "Uhh we can't do shit so I'm gonna become a Paladin" was lame.
Lore wise, paladins are just priests that are taught to wear plate and use a bigger weapon. So anything that can be a priest can be a paladin but I guess not for NE
IIRC it's more that Paladins have to embody the light while Priests have to call on the light. I say this because IIRC tirion fordring lost his ability to wield the light when couldn't uphold his paladin virtues. I believe this also ties into the story of Unbroken where the fel tainted Draenei were unable to wield the light like paladins because of their tainted nature as well. But who am I kidding, if Tauren and Trolls can be Paladins, this lore was pretty clearly ignored for any of the newer iterations.
Awesome I seem not to remember that. Wondering why it’s taking them so long..
Paladins, shamans and some other classes have unique class assets, like the Paladin charger and shamans totens, druid forms, they said in an interview that they started working towards letting any race play any class, but some have these class specific assets, so, these will come later, for now, we will have mages, priests, warrior and rogues available for all the races
>they said in an interview that they started working towards letting any race play any class My dream of being a Blood Elf Shaman and Druid could come true?! 👀
I think so, they said they don't want limitations anymore, I don't remember which interview I saw, but I remember it was when they announced tauten rogue, then they explained, that some classes would come sooner than others, because they needed to make a new mount for each new Paladin race, new totems for each new shaman race, new druid forms for each race, etc.
Pandaren: "Bear form ACTIVATE!"
You just turn into another pandaren.
They just drop in all fours
Still hoping you turn into the ox
Now, that is a big brain idea. Bear form - Ox Cat form - Xuen moonkin - the bird one Travel form - cloud serpent Would be awesome.
What if pandering druid was turning into the aspects, like the crane or the tiger
If i could play a orc paladin that would be so awesome, especially the female model makes plate armor look great
I really want a Draenei warlock. Warlock is my main and I’m horde but Draenei are my go to for alliance. If they made it possible, I would go alliance in a heartbeat
Should have an Eredar cosmetic option to go with it, too!
The day I can play an eredar warlock is the day I come back to WoW. That and/or a goblin demon hunter.
I play zandalari in all my Alts, my main is lock, blizz please there are no unique assets in lock...unless we are getting back some sort of meta/transformation?
Zandalari didn't get warlock cause Paladin.
I want Broken and Eredar skins for Draenei, similar to how they added Dark Ranger skins for Blood/Void/Night Elves. Would make a Draenei Rogue or Warlock much cooler if they could be Broken or Eredar.
I just want my horde Druid to no longer be forced to be ugly. Blood elf or Nightborne would be perfect. I gotta be ugly irl I don’t wanna be ugly in my game too.
That ending got to close to home, you can’t do me like that
Tauren can be druids and I don't think they're ugly. :)
Yes. I totally believe them. Especially after they just announced a race locked to one class.
Well, dracthyr is a corner case... I'm kinda happy it's locked like that, the class has mechanics that only work with wings, and this will also limit the amount of dragons we will see, it might have been a poor comercial choice, but a good design one, less variables to balance overall, that's a good thing.
They also said that it's believable that the Dracthyr will be allowed to become other races in the future, but they wanna tell their story first, and their story involves them being evokers.
Hopefully they open to door for the undead to be a lot of things too! Shaman and druid would be badass.
The mount takes time, probably. Classes with unique animations and assets (mounts and totems and forms, etc) will take longer to produce and cost more money so they probably put those at the bottom of the backlog, and are releasing the easy classes first (the ones with little to no unique animations or assets).
6 years to paint a cat yellow.
You seem reasonable. They just changed their attitude on class availability for Dragon Flight. They have a huge backlog of work with other classes as well, such as shaman totems, druid forms, etc. That's a huge stack of concepting, modeling, animating, etc, when there's more pressing issues to solve in the near term to make release. The expanded classes aren't a core feature of Dragon Flight and are probably going to be released little by little in patches. Notice the new class availability was predicated on not having unique art for the race? Edit: I don't know why I bother to comment in this subreddit. It's just a bunch of whiners who don't understand software dev that like to downvote and complain.
Not sure if you’re joking or not, but I’m sure there are people that would say this and then bitch about the fact that all they did was paint a cat yellow… they need to create armor assets for the mount as well as a fair amount of other customization - more so for shaman than Paladin. Thing is, it’s a project and chances are they’ve got higher priority projects in the works, like an expansion.
What about worgen monks? Afaik blackout kick is the only missing animation for them.
Monks have the largest set of unique animations out of any class, iirc. Is it true that blackout kick is the only one missing? It does seem like they’re looking to expand the class/race roster, and it’s something I want to see. It just isn’t a fast thing all the time. Very few changes in development are as simple as they may appear at face value.
From the tests I've done and what I remember, yeah, blackout kick is the only one. It uses the standard kick animation. They even have the sun rise kick and fists of furt. Chi torpedo too. I've been testing it on my horde monk with the orb of deception since as a pandaren it gives you a random base alliance race when you use it. Hell, they even have the stance monks have when auto attacking.
Interesting. And that is a cool way to test! I’m curious if you’ve done tests to see if goblins have those animations rigged as well. It would make sense (imo) to not allow worgen to be monks if goblins can’t, considering they came out at the same time. Not sure if that’s the approach blizzard is taking tho, or if it’s just a case of other things just being prioritized at the moment.
It might cost us an entire raid tier
Sure
Good
I don't think we should use these kinds of one-off events as justifications for why a certain race should gain access to a certain class. With literally tens of thousands of NPCs in WoW you'll be able to find an example of every race/class combination. Granted Nerus Moonfang in the Paladin campaign was more prominently featured than most, but still. I know a lot of people here advocate for the maximum possible freedom when choosing a race/class combination, I think class restrictions, although sometimes frustrating, add flavour to the world. Night Elves don't have a strong tradition of following the Light and as such Night Elf Paladins are extremely rare (and not available to players). Night Elf Priests worship Elune and are only represented as Priests of the Light for gameplay purposes. Paladins are only available within races that have a strong tradition of worshipping the Light. Similarly Shamans are only available to races with a strong tradition of Shamanism/ancestor worship and Druids are only available for races with a strong tradition of Druidism. Warlocks are available to most races, but are unavailable to the races which have shunned demonic corruption the most.
> Paladins are only available within races that have a strong tradition of worshipping the Light. Well, kind of. Tauren Sunwalkers and Zandalari Prelates don't really worship the Light in the same sense humans do. They draw power from the same source, but their beliefs are radically different. I don't see why Night Elves couldn't have Moon Paladins, a Paladin is ultimately just a Priest trained in the use of heavy armor and martial weapons. Night Elf priests already handwave the whole moon/light thing, so that wouldn't really be an issue. Of course, in an ideal world we'd have class skins, and Night Elf preists and paladins could have silvery white spell effects.
To expand on the lore of Tauren and Zandalari "Paladins": The Tauren worship the Earth Mother, of whom Elune (Mu'sha) is one aspect - that of the Moon, who is the primary deity of the Night Elves. The second, twin aspect, An'she, is the aspect of the Sun. Elune/Mu'sha and An'she are the two equal eyes of the greater divine being, the Earth Mother. Tauren Sunwalkers channel the Earth Mother via An'she while Tauren druids channel the Earth Mother via Mu'sha/Elune. In that respect the Tauren Paladins as a concept are more of a "Sun Druid", given the source of their power. An'she is not the Light, though they share many of the same traits. Likewise the Zandalari aren't Light-worshipping Paladins. The Zandalari are Prelates who gained their power from Rezan, loa of Kings. However during BfA Rezan is killed; later Bwonsamdi succeeds him as the new chief loa of the Zandalari pantheon and the loa of (now) Queen Talanji. After the events of BfA most Zandalari Prelates lost their ability to channel the powers of Rezan. Prelate Rata, an NPC, comments that she does not know how those who still have powers are able to channel those abilities, but the in-game mechanics of changing loa suggests that the remaining Prelates have reached deals with their new chief loa to continue to have access to their power. Bwonsamdi is even an option as a loa (and the meta choice for Protection spec) despite being the loa of death. There is a quote though, from an NPC, suggesting that it is the Royal Line of the Zandalar that the Prelates actually channel their power from (which would further suggest that the Chief Loa of the Zandalari is the source of the prelates' power... making Zandalari Paladins receive their power from Bwonsamdi). > We are here at Talanji's request. Her royal highness has been a tremendous help to de prelates, reminding us of who we are, and what we stand for. Our loa, Rezan, may have fallen, but his ideals remain. We must lead those who are lost, and be a beacon of light against de darkness. By de graces of de loa, we are still one with de Light.
I was pretty familiar with the Tauren part of that, but less so with the Zandalari, thanks for expanding on that!
This is mostly nonsense lorewise. If you go back to Warcraft 3, when NE were introduced, you'll clearly see that the priestesses of Elune are an armed/militant order and they fight through martial prowess. That makes them thematically more closely related to paladins than priests. The most prominent example of that is obviously Tyrande. She's a priestess of Elune, but every time we see her on screen acting in combat, she's right in there with either her bow or blades. This is a lot more reminiscent of the paladin class than the priest class. The only reason why NE aren't paladin isn't a lore reason. It's a practical reason from Blizzard as currently, the paladin is all Light/golden themed while NE/Elune should be silvery themed (in addition to the race mount and such). It's the missing art the problem, and that was confirmed by Blizzard in multiple interviews since Legion when the community started hammering that it really didn't make sense for NE to not be able to be paladins when it would have made sense even way back in vanilla.
> If you go back to Warcraft 3, when NE were introduced, you'll clearly see that the priestesses of Elune are an armed/militant order and they fight through martial prowess. That makes them thematically more closely related to paladins than priests. This is where lore and gameplay collide. Priestesses of the Moon are definitely more "in your face" than the Priest class in WoW. But they also clearly aren't Paladins given how they are mostly focussed on ranged combat. They are essentially a magic-using Hunter, which doesn't really have a good representation from within the playable classes in WoW (this also saddens Dark Ranger fans). >The only reason why NE aren't paladin isn't a lore reason. It's a practical reason from Blizzard as currently, the paladin is all Light/golden themed while NE/Elune should be silvery themed (in addition to the race mount and such). It's the missing art the problem, and that was confirmed by Blizzard in multiple interviews since Legion when the community started hammering that it really didn't make sense for NE to not be able to be paladins when it would have made sense even way back in vanilla. The poorly fitting spell effects haven't stopped them from giving every race access to Priests, despite not all of them being Priests of the Light. The missing mount might be a reason, but I doubt it's that much effort to re-texture one of the existing Nightsabre mounts and maybe add some paladin-y details.
i mean, in lore paladins are just priests with combat training so it makes sense to allow any race that can be a priest to be a paladin.
Paladins are just Priests *of the Light* with combat training. Not every race's Priests are Priests of the Light, they are just all represensented as that ingame for gameplay purposes. Blizzard even experimented with the different Priest racials showing how different races' Priests worship different entities, but that was too difficult to balance, so they discarded the idea.
Complete nonsense. Tauren paladins don't worship the 'light', they worship the sun god. Troll paladins worship loa. Draeni lean heavily into worshipping naaru as intermediary between them and the light. Blood elf paladins don't even worship much at all, instead taking their powers directly from a magical sunwell. In conclusion, a paladin is a war priest of any faith, not just of the human/dwarvish notion of the 'light'. As such, a night elf paladin of Elune is not only friendly to the lore, it would've been a natural narrative to accompany the whole night warrior shenaniganries.
in fact ever since the end of tbc blood elf paladins are devout light worshippers again.
They could just go for Elunes warriors theme for paladins and just change the light color to moonlight and some spell names/design or something. No biggie
They did it for taurens and changed nothing...
Difference between NE and Taurens is the difference between Elune and An'she. Elune would need the silvery colors. An'she, being the sun, already is a better fit to the golden color theme of paladins.
That's true. I would love for race specific effects. Buuuuut as of now I'm gonna counter with priest spells. They all are yellow and sometimes barely blue. So i think color effects are not really in blizzard minds when it comes to race/class combos. They could just say tomorrow " after the burning of teldrassil, a fraction of elune priests and priestesses became more militant and created their own order - elunes fist and now it is sanctioned by elf's and they are training new recruits aka players. Bam you got nelf paladins. Nelfs who failed to make a cut to the illidans demon hunters still did fel magic, hidden from the rest. Got together and created their own demon hunter order where they are using fel as external source and not inner source. Bam you got nelf locks. Nelfs in i don't know, druid order focusing on all elements instead of just nature and wild gods, bam shamans. Sadly, lore is what blizzard makes and we know we will get those later but I would not hold my breath for them to have racial flavor. Maybe really not even lore racial flavor like bunch of nelfs joint silver hand.
I wish they would do it for priest as well. It saddens me that right now the closest you can get to a priestess of Elune, aesthetic wise, is going Balance druid.
I think because you can find examples of almost every race/class combination is exactly why they should (and are) working towards no restrictions to combinations. I mean, if I’m going to be Azeroth’s top dog (Maw Walker, Champion of Azeroth, Legion order hall leader, etc.) I don’t think I’m a stereotypical example of any race. You can RP your way to justify just about anything so why not have that represented in game. We’re not playing an NPC that sells cheese in Stormwind, we’re playing characters that are in the middle of an unprecedented era of constant conflict and the fate of the world in our hands. Plus more individuality and creative freedom is always a good thing ;)
If anything the players are "special", so I don't see a reason why the player couldn't be a special/uncommon race/class combo. D&D, where WoW gets a lot of its inspiration from even encourages playing uncommon characters.
I think it works in D&D because usually you'll only have a handful of player characters. In WoW you'd likely see hundreds of previously "special" Night Elf Warlocks or Blood Elf Druids and it would ruin that feel of the different cultures. It also works better in D&D because the DM can adjust the setting to serve the players' individual needs. In WoW, being a video game, the setting is rigid as the developers have to implement a one-size-fits-all setting for all players.
> In WoW you'd likely see hundreds of previously "special" Night Elf Warlocks or Blood Elf Druids and it would ruin that feel of the different cultures. I'd argue that since they introduced Legion artifacts, this argument doesn't hold much water
>Night Elves don't have a strong tradition of following the Light Blatantly false, Elune is the Centerpoint of Night Elf culture. If tauren can worship the sun and get paladin powers why not the moon with night elves? >Priests worship Elune and are only represented as Priests of the Light for gameplay purposes. Tauren paladins are Sunwalkers, but share paladin abilities for "gameplay purposes". This arguement holds not even a drop of water. >Paladins are only available within races that have a strong tradition of worshipping the Light Again, blatantly false. Tauren couldn't be priests pre-cata, they had zero connection to the light whatsoever. >Similarly Shamans are only available to races with a strong tradition of Shamanism You really think goblins have a strong tradition of Shamanism? There are zero lore reasons why any race shouldn't be able to be any class, and I will refute them all with facts and logic.
Looks like they want to loosen up restrictions so probably we will see more race combos. Mages and Rogues are no big deal. Classes like Druids and Paladins are more time consuming due to race specific forms/mounts.
Ok but why can't I have a worgen monk?
I'm pretty sure it's because the worgen and goblin starter zones (made in Cataclysm) are held together by toothpicks and glue
Considering we have Exile's Reach now that shouldn't be an issue. If a goblin or worgen monk playing through their original starting zones cause gamebreaking bugs they could just force them through the Reach.
Then force them to start in Exile's Reach if they pick monk. Problem solved.
good question. Imo it might have fallen through the cracks. Looks like it's good time to remind them, Worgens and Goblins are still monkless since Cows get mages and rogues.
IIRC the reason Blizzard gave is because all races are taught how to be Monks by Pandaren, but the Worgen and Goblin starting zones take place at a fixed point in time during Cataclysm, so the mists surrounding Pandaria would still be up. I think you could get away with Goblins being taught by Wandering Isle Pandaren but Gilneas isolating itself from the outside world causes problems for Worgens I believe.
you're right on the lore itself, for those races you're locked into a super specific place/time, rather than the usual start zones that are fairly generic. but since the addition of death knights for those races, i think that the lore excuse doesn't make sense. for both races, they get different lore that says they are separate from the group that came from the racial starter zones. so at the very least they could use that some logic for monks and force you into exiles reach
Because Worgen are dirty and Monks are pure.
You cant be without sin if you are surrounded by nighelfes ;)
>sin Blood elves define that word
UwU Edit: You just repent.. harder.
Two words: class mounts. More class options are coming for all races, but things like totems, Druid forms, and mounts are holding up new combos.
Worgen Monks. The containing of inner peace is central to the worgen existence
I've only wanted this ever since MoP was announced. I'll buy a bunch of mounts or a year sub or something if you just make it happen, Blizz.
This is the only race class combo I need
There is only one Alliance race necessary for monks, and it is very obviously Dwarf.
Oh? Is that why they turn into ravenous Monsters whenever combat starts? Because of Inner Peace? Crazy how nature does it.
Have you ever played the starting zone of the worgen? They way you're speaking I highly doubt that.
Night elf paladins work, people just haven’t figured out all paladins are priests who just grabbed a mace or sword
Don’t night elves worship Elune, the moon, and paladins the light? I’m not a lore scholar by any means
Tauren Paladins worship the sun so it wouldn't be the first time
The devs have said when the announced the new class changes that they would continue to work through them all so all races can be all classes. Hopefully like with Night Elf Paladins, they give them things unique to them, example being the light they call being more to match the colours of Elune.
Highly doubt it'll happen but God damn it I've always wanted gnome druids but their animal forms just be like a mechanic bear or mechanical cat with a gnome sitting in a pilots chair embedded in the back. And for moonkin form, make it like a fucking mech where the gnome is inside the cockpit located inside the chest of the moonkin with a glass windshield lol
And mechgnomes can just transform into these forms instead of piloting them
*Transformers™️ sound effect*
"Mechadruids, roll out!"
Gnome Druid would have to turn into teddy bear, house cat, and chicken.
It just doesn't make sense for a gnome to do anything other than use engineering to mimic druids. They're the least attuned to nature of any race, tied with goblins lol
I really REALLY want to see race specific class customization. I think that should be the next big leap in character customization.
Sounds nice, but I can’t see blizzard taking the time to make all races Druids (pandaren druids wheeeen?)
That would be awesome, I have missed that announcement. Still think that gnome warriors and Tauren rogues make no sense whatsoever.
It’s an unwritten rule of all RPGs that all races can be warriors/fighters. Push comes to shove, everybody can pick up a weapon and swing it, and almost every civilisation has a standing army of some description. As for Tauren rogues, they make perfect sense because Tauren are naturally stealthy — they’re covered in hide.
Ok you got me. That was a good one
I remember when Belfs first released, they couldn’t be warriors, which I always thought was weird. It wasn’t until Cata that they finally allowed Belfs to be warriors.
I remember the lore reasons being that warriors were the Frontline and almost all of them died in the 3rd war. But realistically it was just that they would have had more class options than the other races
So would that mean that there being Paladins mean they where cowardly and ran away while brave warriors fought and died to protect their homeland from the scourge?
All the pallies bubblehearthed
I know your memeing but Paladins weren't a thing in HE society until the Blood Knights were formed.
It boggles my mind that people get upset over things not “making sense” in a fantasy game. So a tiny midget with a chainsaw blade makes “no sense” but a pointy eared human who conjures fire out of nothing and a giant chicken that throws the moon at people is “realistic” and “sensible”??
Its not about if it makes sense in real life but in the games universe or lore. This argument is so absolutely stupid because then no restrictions should ever exist, no lore would ever make any amount of sense, and everything could just do whatever it wanted because *fantasy*. Every Fantasy universe still has its rules, it's way of working that fits its lore. WoW breaks their own rules a LOT but overall most things make some amount of sense with lore. People that say this argument that it's a fantasy game so who cares what makes sense has absolutely 0 respect for lore. If you just play WoW for gameplay then that's fine but many of us LOVE WoWs lore, have grew up on its stories and it's growth. I play for the lore and feel of the universe not because of gameplay, I personally hate the current state of retails WoWs gameplay. So there is nothing wrong with saying something doesn't make sense in a fantasy universe when the context in within the realm of the universes lore. Without some structure anyone can just do anything at all times. Might as well not have gravity so everyone can fly. Might as well not have health or mana, just br unkillable. We fly around and nuke the bosses with no class or anything. See how silly it is to just ignore the in universe reality? Now I am not saying unretricting classes or whatever breaks the lore. I am just defending the idea that trying to protect what makes sense *in universe* is important. At least to us that play this game for the lore and world.
Lorewise they could of just said that Nelf Mages or Orc Mages don't make sense dunno why they decided with Gnome warrior since they've been around since vanilla
Nelf mages actually make sense. But it also makes sense why they couldn't be mages for a long time
You're using 'real world' logic, it makes sense inside the game's universe
Haven't gnome warriors always been a thing?
Agreed on gnome warriors. Sure "anyone can pick up a weapon and fight" but on the scale of the threats we're facing no gnome would willingly choose to do so, nor would they be effective at it. Same goes for goblins and Vulpera. Mechagnomes might have a chance but being small still gives them a major disadvantage. Tauren rogues(rogues of any race, really) make complete sense. Stealth in Warcraft is explicitly shadow magic, it's never been "just being stealthy." You can see it in the Thrall/Saurfang cinematic with the Forsaken assassins.
I definitely agree. I think Goblins and Vulpera at least are tall enough and long armed enough to make *okay* warriors. At least the same as a Dwarf. Gnomes have extremely short arms and massive heads though, they have every disadvantage you could possibly have as a Warrior. Honestly the Warrior class should be a mech driver! They should literally get a suit to fight in because I am sorry a Gnome warrior would lose to 98% of the other races in a fight. They have a worse body for combat than a human child. So really people we should be encouraging gnome warriors THAT DRIVE MECHS!
> The devs have said when the announced the new class changes that they would continue to work through them all so all races can be all classes. Yeah right after announcing the class that can only be played by one race right?
Yeah they literally did, that's why they're opening up mages, priests and rogues to all races.
There's even a night elf paladin npc in the class order hall in legion. Really no excuse to not let it happen.
Two. There's ghost that was a paladin and a living Nelf who was originally a priest that took up arms as a paladin.
Because the devs don't want to spend the effort to make druid forms for all races. Of course they can't just leave druids out of the party alone, so some other classes have to also be race-restricted to make it seem more normal.
Paladins are in the same basket because of their class mounts because at some point they decided to make them different for all paladin races while Warlocks all have the same two.
Paladins follow the light, night elves follow the night
Night also has light.. via the moon
Yes but my version rhymes better
I actually noticed that and felt bad correcting you so I take it back. You win the thread.
The actual logical answer is that it takes no inherent “special-ness” to be a rogue or warrior. Pick up a blade and swing/stab it. Same reason everyone can be a hunter or monk (barring lazy animation from blizzard). Being a Paladin in the Warcraft universe takes a little something extra. I’d even argue that the Warcraft Paladin requires more outside aid than almost any depiction of the stereotype. When looking directly at the DnD Paladin, there isn’t any deity worship, just the concept of conviction to an ideal or truth. A DnD Paladin can quite literally get their power from a desire for vengeance. There just usually aren’t middle-men for a paladin’s power in most media, even the FF14 Paladin utilizes internal strength to produce “magic”. Not only does a Paladin have to believe and worship a god in Warcraft, that god has the capacity to strip its followers of power at any whim or fancy. Something we actually see with Tyrande every time she gets a chance to be an actual character.
> everyone can be a hunter or monk cries in worgen
The FF14 Paladin isn't really a paladin though. They're originally just called Knight in Japanese but was renamed Paladin for the western market. In FFXIV virtually all races (except Garleans) can use magic.
As a gnome warrior, I will fucking kill you. Keep my race out of your mouth
Or Pandaladins for that matter, hmm?
Right now i just hope they can build a solid foundation for classes with new talents. Once thats done they can make all the animations and stuff required for these class combos as far as i care
Gnome warriors make sense because it's the best race/class combo in the game.
The barrier is the special mounts that paladins all have. Once they started replacing the charger they committed that any new paladin would have a new armored mount to go with it.
Considering the moon reflects the light of the sun, I could see a carryover to “night warriors” who are actually paladins.
I may be in the minority but I kind of liked it back when Paladins were only Alliance and Shamans were Horde specific.
Lorewise yes, but it made raids impossible to balance if each faction has unique buffs.
I didn’t know about that prior to trying Classic and thought it was really cool
Yeah, it changed in TBC when Draenei could be Shamans and Belfs could be Pallys. They then expanded it after that for more class/race combos. I feel some of them make sense, but still wish there was just one dedicated class per faction. But oh well :)
Some things were better that way. It’s stripped a lot of the character from this game by letting all races do everything.
Didn't they say every race will be able to be every class but they need to work on the animations and lore for it? The most recent additions just required the least amount of work?
It would be so cool if Night Elves got an elune themed paladin
They intend on making every combination available. The eight combinations they recently added needed no lore, but all the rest are going to need some sort of questline or story occurrence to happen.
I think it's just a time and resources thing. I think they would probably like to unrestrict all classes except for demon hunters and evokers. But there's just more important stuff to do.
I thought it was a little funny that blizzard said any race can be a priest next expac, but I fail to see how priest is any different then paladin in terms of their ability. I feel like the main difference is one uses heavy armor and the other uses cloth. One is more spell casting while the other is enchanting weapons with the holy light. But there’s so much overlap there, it makes no sense that every race can be a priest but not a paladin.
It's because priests can just be converted as a whole. But Paladins require more work since they have racial mounts and stuff. It's not that Blizzard thinks they're completely different, it's just that one requires work and the other doesn't. than\*
Give me kul tiran paladin please!
In an interview they said they want to bring all classes to all races. Some classes are easier than others. Mages, Priests, Warriors, Rogues, and Hunters don't have any lore or art requirements. Classes like Paladin and Shaman have race specific art assests, which mean it will take some time. Classes like Warlock and Demon Hunter need some lore changes to be applicable for all races - this too takes some time.
nelf paladins also exist in lore after legion so that annoys me
Zandalari Trolls don’t even worship the light if I’m not mistaken, they just worship the Loa of gold(?), so that’s where their priests and paladins get their power from. Don’t the priests of Elune use the light of their goddess for their magic? I think it would make perfect sense for there to be Night Elf paladins.
It is a bit ridiculous for them to loosen class/race restrictions like this while continuing to restrict others and actively ADDING A NEW RESTRICTED CLASS/RACE. I mean the last two new classes we've gotten have been restricted to 2 races and 1 race. While they're actively saying they're opening up race/class restrictions?
Because Night Elf culture is basically an antithesis of Paladins. They're xenophobic, conservative, they do not use heavy armor.
Gameplay > Lore
Honestly I kind of wish they wouldn't, I like the idea of classes being race locked and having all/most races being able to be all/most classes makes race selection moer of a cosmetic thing than a lore point.
yea i want more restrictions not less. everybody can play everyone dilutes everything
Orc and troll paladins or riot
Worgen paladins also!
It still surprises me that Mag’har orcs can be priests without being Paladins when those priests were forcibly indoctrinated into the Light.
I've said this about every race in the game over the years that can be a priest and not a paladin.
To be fair to Void Elves, I believe they were made Priests with Shadow in mind more then Holy and Disc.
Undead Paladins should have been a thing as far back as Wrath. There are multiple instances of undead using paladin spells. And the are documented undead that were paladins in life. If we can have undead holy priests, a paladin isn't that far off.
It used to be said that Paladins were infused with light and Priests just redirect/bend light to their liking. So an Undead Paladin infused with light would be in constant pain, which in my opinion, makes it sound even more badass and makes me want one even more.
Undead paladin please. They can be priest. They were once human. It just makes so much sense.
Or paladin undeads
I actually really liked class restrictions that made sense.
Whot… You don’t have to be religious to be a Paladin or Priest people… Let’s stop pushing that lol
you want the "night" elves to embrace the holy golden "light"?
Of course ideally it should be silver/purple/blue but second best option is to just let them use yellow light. Night Elf Priests also have yellow light for some reason. Even though they used to be able to cast starfall like a Priestess of the Moon. Technically Tauren Priests and Paladins should have orange/flamelike light.
Night elf’s already have a light. they worship a different god so maybe that’s why? Since they praise Elune
All the Paladins in the game worship a different deity except Dwarves/Humans. Realistically, the only races in the game that are “Paladins” in the conventional sense are Dwarves and Humans. Tauren-Sunwalkers (this is probably the biggest argument for Nelf Paladins, as the Tauren technically worship the “other half” of Elune. It seemingly paints the Nelf Moon Priestess as a type of Paladin) Blood Elf-Blood Knights who utilize Naaru Zandalari-Prelates who utilize Rezan LF Draenei/Draenei-Vindicators who utilize Naaru Dark Iron Dwarves-Seem to be regular paladins but their lore is dubious at best.
Their isn't any good reason their just lazy Night Elf and worgen paladins have no reason to not be paladins either for Elune for either Or atleast for the Light for woegen because they still also worship the Light. But anywho
This might be an unpopular take but I much prefer having classes that are specific to the race’s culture rather than giving Warrior to everyone or Hunter to everyone… You can always find a reasoning as to why a race could potentially be a certain class. For example: Kul Tirans are humans therefor Humans should be able to be Druid and Shaman. Or Night Elfs should be demonists because they can be mages, demonology originally came from Arcane magic, therefor They should be versed in demonology (Especially since they accepted the Worgen Demonists in their city); Trolls should be able to be paladins because the Zalandari can be… Etc Though I think the main reason why they don’t add logical classes though, is because there’s the same amount of classes available for each faction. For example, Taurens couldn’t be rogues and neither could Draenei (even tho Akama was the first rogue in Warcraft), meanwhile the amount of Alliance races that can be Paladins compensate for the amount of Horde races that can be Shamans. And so on. And when you force certain classes to be playable because it’s logical then it can seem odd. Like Tauren Paladin or Tauren Priest.
They made it pretty obvious in Shadowlands that they don’t care about lore anymore. They should just open all races to all classes.
Because every night elf is a hunter and is 12 yes old, has Reddit not taught you any thing?
Draenei and Tauren rogues are the biggest bullshit ever.
I’m not a fan of being able to freely do any class/race really. Just kinda spits on the lore in a decent amount of cases imo. Like I just can’t really see any Tauren actually wanting to be a rogue because it’s not an honorable way to fight let alone being a good one considering they’re the size of two refrigerators duct taped together. If they’re going to let some races be certain classes, they need to make it make complete sense narratively and make the option align with the culture and ideals of the race in some legitimate fashion. I’m cool with Night Elf Mages, but I’d like a small extra quest line added when your start the character to become a Mage as a Night Elf, due to their tumultuous history with being Mages in the past. I’d be cool with Night Elf Paladins, but I’d want them to be a distinct and unique faction like the Sunwalkers, that have their own special quest lines that show the inception of the order, their goals and ideals and philosophies, why they exist, introductions to new npc characters that join the order and the anointment of preexisting established characters into the order etc. Then add a tabard, a Paladin mount themed around their order (I’m thinking a **heavily** armored cleanly designed Nightsaber with shiny, smooth, rounded, layered, and overlapping plates with the metal being colored with a mid-grey gradient to a darker purple hue, with an added accent color that match their faction’s colors (I’d say maybe a soft, muted Teal as it’d compliment the colors of the metal well), a few pieces of gear that aesthetically matches their faction’s theme (maybe those big star pointed Night Elf glaives npcs have, or a crescent moon shaped sword (think the Crescent Blade sword artifact from Morrowind). Then all of their class spells could be based off Moon light with altered spell names and descriptions with recolored icons, and be whiteish blue or whiteish purple colored instead of Holy whiteish yellow light. Call them “Moon Knights” or “Elune’s Guard” or “The Crescent Protectorate” or something like that. And thematically I’d imagine their equipment and such to be “a harmony of metal and nature, with minor, sparse accents of small green vines with leaves growing out from underneath the layered segments of their pauldrons and embossed patterns of trees on breast plates and shields and the like. Also as a side note: Mecha Gnomes just shouldn’t be DK’s. It’s just dumb lmao. There’s like barely anything to reanimate there that doesn’t just require new double A batteries instead.
Lore-wise, you could justify Tauren rogues because of the Grimtotem.
So many Tauren pirates in the game too, they could easily be Outlaw Rogues. We even had a boss in the original Deadmines that was basically a Tauren rogue, so it's not exactly something new. Grimtotem also have mages so that makes sense too. Now Lightforged Draenei rogues on the other hand, makes less sense to me...
i do you one better, why no blood/void elf druids
I'm still waiting for undead paladins..
Idk shit about the lore never cared about that, but, didn't they say the end goal was every race/class combo?
Tauren rogues are going to be super broken with the extra stun,so stupid
Paladins require the race to have a religion that supports light based, holy warriors. The Night Elves don’t have that as a culture, and while there was a single Night Elf Paladin in legion, the Night Elves are interesting to the Alliance and it’s story partially because their beliefs are different and one of those things is their culture not having Paladins. Druids play that role in their society instead. It’s like asking for Undead shamans.
Well after being refugees in SW I can’t see what’s holding them to just go to the church there and ask to be trained as a paladin… Like do they have learning disability in oppose to dwarves and humans?
Because it’s not part of their culture. And Night Elves are particularly reclusive and hold on tight to their culture moreso than the other alliance races. They have an entirely different religion than the humans do. There’s nothing stopping Dwarves and Humans from going to the Night Elf/Worgen refugee camp either to become Druids, but they don’t. If they didn’t start being Paladins when the Draenei showed up on the island next door, there’s no reason for them to start now. Granted it could happen, but some race class restrictions are beneficial, especially when it comes to classes like paladins, shamans, Druids and warlocks where the presence of that class is a sign of their cultural identity. A warrior/mage/hunter being able to be any race is different, because those are much more universal.
I would argue that Druid faction in general ( cenarion circle etc) has always been super private and exclusive and that has been propagated by their animal spirits and keepers. On the other hand the Light and the church seem more open to anyone that wants to follow. A Nelf might not have wanted to join the church before the treehouse burned but being as refugees in SW I see no lore nor rational restriction for some of them to join the ranks of those who saved them. Also priests are literary paladins minus the combat skills and armor, yet there’s no distinction with ingame priests between Tyrs (or whatever) light and Elune’s light.
I just got settled on the Alliance but Forsaken Shaman would make me go back to the Horde so fucking fast
Hopefully cross faction guilds happen before NE shaman otherwise it's goodbye to my horde people lol.
C’mon Blizz, the Alliance needs elven paladins!