Zandalari Druid Travel Form Raptor

[flepser]

Personally I would prefer if Druids would be Night Elf only on Alliance, the Worgen thing is already rather wrong.

Agreeing there!

[Lyvefire]

Druid will always be night elf centric in teachings and aesthetic, so you don't have to worry about not getting enough representation. I mean the whole druid thing started with Malfurion. The teachings taught by the Cenarion Circle are formulated by Malfurion and his friends because they are the best out there.

The loas actually pre-date Night Elf Druidism though I'm not sure about dinomancy. Quality is an argument that we'd have to save for when we actually see the best dinomancy (if that even happens now that we have generic cats/bears...)

[Wildmoon]

The loas actually pre-date Night Elf Druidism though I'm not sure about dinomancy. Quality is an argument that we'd have to save for when we actually see the best dinomancy (if that even happens now that we have generic cats/bears...)

Dinomancy is not druidism in itself. If the process is simply getting favor from Loas then they simply do not understand Druidism. Malfurion is the best because he actually knows stuff about the nature of the world itself. Shifting into this and that is simply an application.

It does not matter if loas pre-date night elves. Malfurion is the first druid despite Cenarius having taught tauren before the night elves.

You can see from the dialogue concering the teaching of druidism to the trolls by Gonk that the trolls traditionally were made stupid by the loas making them serve one loa at a time. All they knew was to serve the loas and got their favors. Gonk was desperate so he taught the actual knowledge to the trolls which in troll's words is "serving all the spirits at the same time". It's essentially what Malfurion has been teaching which is to actually understand the underlying structure of nature and the world itself. The other loas were not quite pleased with Gonk because they did not feel like having the trolls knowing stuff. The trolls then joined the CC because they were afraid that the loas would not continue to teach them.

[Thundertwig]

Made a post about this on the official forums, but it seems like most people aren't too concerned by it.

Very odd that they would bother to include zandalari druids if they were not giving them proper forms. It feels as if we got gnome hunters, but they could not tame mechanical beasts.

It seems to me that if zandalari did not fit the themes and style of player druids, it would make more sense to not allow them to be druids rather than shove them into the mould. It was said that the allied races get classes that make sense in the lore primarily, and this seems weird beyond any other race/class combo we have in the game. A zandalari invoking ursoc? Excuse me?

It seems unlikely it will be changed, but I feel bad that the artists who have to figure out a bear form that feels inspired and appropriate for zandalari trolls.

[wiwiwawa]

Zandalari trolls, "normal" trolls. Only 2 races for ally players. Bah what ever imo. Ppl will probably play what ever race that have the "best"
racial for your specc/class. Night elves have had vanish as feral forever. I always wanted that as an tauren druid but I realized that Night elves didnt have friends and my social networks as racial so I just roll with it.. The grass is always greener....

Btw I read that watcherDev said that only raptor form would be different. All other Zandalari forms should be bear, cat and so on. Maybe they change their mind?!

[Khrux]

I feel like druid gets the short stick when it comes to visuals in general. Transmog, new races, tier sets etc. because 2 of the 4 specs have a mandatory fixed appearance that doesn't change with gear and only marginally change with race.

I'd actually love if every druid form had a glyph to remove the form, similar to boomkins. You could say that kind of defeats the point of a druid, but I like the playstyle of druid. Having all roles available etc. but I just don't like that your stuck in cat mode as feral 24/7 with a fixed appearance that doesn't evolve over the xpac with new gear/weapons etc.

Zandalari is great, but if its barely noticeable difference from regular trolls when in a form its a bit of a waste unless their racials are OP (doubtful)

Disclaimer: I'm aware of the artifact skins, but they are still limited and will all be "old" appearances soon. Plus the zandalari one will be a single static look...

[Wildmoon]

I feel like druid gets the short stick when it comes to visuals in general. Transmog, new races, tier sets etc. because 2 of the 4 specs have a mandatory fixed appearance that doesn't change with gear and only marginally change with race.

I'd actually love if every druid form had a glyph to remove the form, similar to boomkins. You could say that kind of defeats the point of a druid, but I like the playstyle of druid. Having all roles available etc. but I just don't like that your stuck in cat mode as feral 24/7 with a fixed appearance that doesn't evolve over the xpac with new gear/weapons etc.

Zandalari is great, but if its barely noticeable difference from regular trolls when in a form its a bit of a waste unless their racials are OP (doubtful)

Disclaimer: I'm aware of the artifact skins, but they are still limited and will all be "old" appearances soon. Plus the zandalari one will be a single static look...

How are you going to claw, rip, maul, thrash or shred with your staff? It would be silly beyond belief. Unlike moonkin and tree form, cat and bear serve mandatory functional need both in lore and in game.

[Lyvefire]

How are you going to claw, rip, maul, thrash or shred with your staff? It would be silly beyond belief. Unlike moonking and tree form, cat and bear serve mandatory functional need both in lore and in game.

Yeah I can't agree with removing the forms from feral/guardian but it is rather annoying how most expansions leave you with pretty much no progression for appearances at all. Legion was a really positive step here that's going to fall right by the wayside.

Its also another reason why decisions like "No dinosaur forms because the name is bear/cat form" are so frustrating. We know they're doing some form of appearance transmog thing for form appearances after Legion so we could easily get a new feral/guardian appearance every now and then by reusing a model that's appropriate (Malorne lead to our stag travel form) but limiting it to to cat/bear is way too design restrictive for this to be viable outside of once in a blue moon type scenarios or require enormously terrible lore concessions (druids of the flame firecat bs).

If Druidism is ever to open up to the level people want (ie to get more races involved in them) then they really need to drop the strict form labeling.

[Wildmoon]

Yeah I can't agree with removing the forms from feral/guardian but it is rather annoying how most expansions leave you with pretty much no progression for appearances at all. Legion was a really positive step here that's going to fall right by the wayside.

Its also another reason why decisions like "No dinosaur forms because the name is bear/cat form" are so frustrating. We know they're doing some form of appearance transmog thing for form appearances after Legion so we could easily get a new feral/guardian appearance every now and then by reusing a model that's appropriate (Malorne lead to our stag travel form) but limiting it to to cat/bear is way too design restrictive for this to be viable outside of once in a blue moon type scenarios or require enormously terrible lore concessions (druids of the flame firecat bs).

If Druidism is ever to open up to the level people want (ie to get more races involved in them) then they really need to drop the strict form labeling.

I don't think it's that simple though. We will have to understand it from Blizzard's perspective. You may have noticed that cat and bear got unique animation updates in legion. They likely plan to update them further too. If there are unique combat forms for each race then it's simply not possible for them to update animations for all forms that don't share the same skeleton. That would put disproportionate amount of workload and resource on one class. While their forms use npc animations. That's why they opt to give othe races only unique utility forms because they all use existing animations.

Blizzard simply had to choose the most appropiate and iconic forms and that's obviously cat and bear.

[Immitis]

Nope because I want to try out the new feature that is Allied Races, and Blizzard has chosen that if you're an Alliance Druid, you don't get to try it out as your main. I'm not the kind of person to really play alts, so I'm given an ultimatum of quit my class or give up playing a new race.

meanwhile, over here, my two mains are death knight and demon hunter so if i want to play a new race of either faction i have to completely reroll

[Khrux]

How are you going to claw, rip, maul, thrash or shred with your staff? It would be silly beyond belief. Unlike moonkin and tree form, cat and bear serve mandatory functional need both in lore and in game.

I agree, the naming and theme of feral/guardian abilities doesn't lend well to playing in "humanoid" form. However Legion actually came close to the idea, with ferals using daggers and guardians using claws. Obviously cosmetic glyphs are just that, cosmetic. They are not mandatory and I don't see any issue with me personally choosing to ignore the fact that I'm using a skill called "rip" while swinging a staff.

I mean warriors can "rend" using a Staff/Mace, so... :P

Shamans can glyph for "ghost raptor", as if ghost wolf wasn't odd enough for alliance shamans....

There is plenty of glyphs that stretch the boundries of "lore" or accepted class fantasy, just for fun cosmetic changes and I personally (along with many others I'd guess) would appreciate being able to have fully customisable appearances and appearance progression like every other class does. We've had the ape-bear in Legion, the Saberon in WoD(?) so lets loose the restrictions a bit here and let people forgo the form if they choose to.

[toxicrusader]

...this is the definition of dramatic.

No they should not do anything as ridiculous as Void Elf Druids or swapping Highmountain Tauren for Lightforged Draenei. Like seriously, where is the sense in that? If you are very lucky then they may put in the effort for regular Draenei to get Druids but otherwise you are shit out of luck for now. Blame the lackluster Allied races Ally got not that they aren't mangling their concepts to force Druids into them. If you want to be a different Druid on Alliance then start campaigning positively for an Allied race that supports one. Some starting points:

Unlikely (Already have an Allied race):
- Broken Draenei
- Wildhammer Dwarves
- Vulpira?

Suitable:
- Night Elven Worgen

They didn't even gave us new worgen models yet and you're thinking about an allied race already?

Slow down, life is to be savored.

[Wildmoon]

I agree, the naming and theme of feral/guardian abilities doesn't lend well to playing in "humanoid" form. However Legion actually came close to the idea, with ferals using daggers and guardians using claws. Obviously cosmetic glyphs are just that, cosmetic. They are not mandatory and I don't see any issue with me personally choosing to ignore the fact that I'm using a skill called "rip" while swinging a staff.

I mean warriors can "rend" using a Staff/Mace, so... :P

Shamans can glyph for "ghost raptor", as if ghost wolf wasn't odd enough for alliance shamans....

There is plenty of glyphs that stretch the boundries of "lore" or accepted class fantasy, just for fun cosmetic changes and I personally (along with many others I'd guess) would appreciate being able to have fully customisable appearances and appearance progression like every other class does. We've had the ape-bear in Legion, the Saberon in WoD(?) so lets loose the restrictions a bit here and let people forgo the form if they choose to.

Keeping coherent and believeable theme in the game is extremely important. There's always the line that should not be crossed. There are minor bumps here and there but it's simply no reason for the slippery slope. By that kind of reasoning we could have weapons simply be a stat sticks and let all classes transmog into anything like a shaman with a gun or a prot paladin glyphed to have no shield but using shield-based abilities anyway.

[Khrux]

I mean, the game has been going this way for a long time. Transmog itself breaks "immersion" or whatever term people use these days in their crusade to keep things pure.

Customisation is a big part of online games, plenty of games live and die by their cosmetic micro transactions alone. We've been able to dress ourselves however we want for years now and change our weapon appearances how we like. I honestly don't see any valid argument against form-less feral/guard glyphs, outside of legacy arguments that things should remain pure, stay true to lore yada yada. Well if you want that, don't use the glyph..... why ruin it for everyone else?

I mean if I could play a feral without forms, I would ~21 tier sets, ~17(?) pvp sets, numerous random ass stand alone items, 100's of weapon transmogs (staff/spear/2h mace etc.) and could have actual appearance progression throughout an expansion while in combat instead of just standing around AFK in Orgrimmar on your mount....

[Wildmoon]

I mean, the game has been going this way for a long time. Transmog itself breaks "immersion" or whatever term people use these days in their crusade to keep things pure.

Customisation is a big part of online games, plenty of games live and die by their cosmetic micro transactions alone. We've been able to dress ourselves however we want for years now and change our weapon appearances how we like. I honestly don't see any valid argument against form-less feral/guard glyphs, outside of legacy arguments that things should remain pure, stay true to lore yada yada. Well if you want that, don't use the glyph..... why ruin it for everyone else?

I mean if I could play a feral without forms, I would ~21 tier sets, ~17(?) pvp sets, numerous random ass stand alone items, 100's of weapon transmogs (staff/spear/2h mace etc.) and could have actual appearance progression throughout an expansion while in combat instead of just standing around AFK in Orgrimmar on your mount....

I just gave you a valid argument.... Every game out there needs to be believeable to a certain degree. It's the reason why prot warrior/paladin should always hold a shield in order to use shield-based abilities. It's also the same reasno why Blizzard will not let hunters shoot arrows out of their sword.

Some freedom here and there is absolutely no reason for the slippery slope.

[Mephet]

The moment I heard that I knew I'd make one as a alt. Raptors are awesome.

[Shakou]

It's also worth pointing out Tauren Paladins are extremely unpopular.

Not accurate at all, Tauren paladins are in fact more common than Dwarf or Draenei Paladins. Tauren is also indisputably the best race option for a paladin in pve (esp prot), and for that reason it was extremely common to see them in Cataclysm, and it is not uncommon by any stretch right now. Unless you're one of those weirdos that cares about lore more than your own gameplay experience, this never bothered you. If there's anything rare in this game it's people that care about the lore that much.

That being said, Void Elf druids would in fact be retarded. And it's totally fine that Alliance will have 4 options for paladin and Horde will have 4 options for Druid. No doubt there would be whining on the Alliance if they got no new Paladin races.

P.s. Tauren Paladin's was never a huge stretch of the lore over Blood Elf Paladins in the first place, so-called Lore Nerds up in here don't even know what you're talking about at all.

[Vlaid]

The more info we get about allied races the more half-assed they feel. I think if they aren't going to put the time in to give say druid capable allied races their own forms, don't bother at all.

I'd rather get one new race every expansion or two than a half dozen half assed allied races that are just reskins with nothing special.

[Deleted]

Alliance tears are fucking tasty.

[Keiste]

I think they should make different travel forms for every race that can be druids.