Poll: Should any race be allowed to play any class?

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  1. #1
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Question Any race = any class?

    I admit, I tend to read a lot of blogs on both Warcraft and many other issues. It’s sad how many good blogs have gone the way of the dodo in recent years (including my own, actually), but that’s a sign of a game that’s either losing players or players losing interest in the game and writing about it.

    But this post did make me think:

    ”Is it time to ditch the class and race restrictions?”

    Ultimately, players have favourite classes and favourite races. The fact that you often cannot play both together is, I suspect, frustrating for a lot people. To my mind, then, it’s an interesting question to see what this section of the community thinks about it. The only criticism of doing it traditionally has been that some races just don’t fit certain classes, but the introduction of monks largely smashed this convention up while Draenor has also re-written many rules (draenei warlocks being the main example). Blizzard believes that gameplay comes before story, and I think a lot of players would love their favourite race to be available to their favourite class and could suspend disbelief indefinitely in order to make it so.

    So, is it time? Is it time to just let any race be any class?

    Answers in the usual way!

  2. #2
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    Yes, it's time.
    Generally speaking, this restriction only made sence when we had faction-specific classes back in vanilla. With their removal it no longer makes any sence for such restrictions.

    Lore can easily be tweaked to serve the new combinations. Like what they did with Sunwalkers. If this isn't the most incredibly sense-lacking race-class combo with no real lore implementation, what is?
    They also added nelf mages, which is in total contradiction with any lore, since we all know how nelfs react on any arcance usage ever since the Sundering.
    So why not Draenei warlocks? We have eredar around after all.

    - - - Updated - - -

    On the second thought, adding that requires some effort for animation designers, gear designers and such. Mayber this is the main purpose for not implementing that as of yet.

  3. #3
    Old God endersblade's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bladebarrier View Post
    Yes, it's time.
    Generally speaking, this restriction only made sence when we had faction-specific classes back in vanilla. With their removal it no longer makes any sence for such restrictions.

    Lore can easily be tweaked to serve the new combinations. Like what they did with Sunwalkers. If this isn't the most incredibly sense-lacking race-class combo with no real lore implementation, what is?
    They also added nelf mages, which is in total contradiction with any lore, since we all know how nelfs react on any arcance usage ever since the Sundering.
    So why not Draenei warlocks? We have eredar around after all.

    - - - Updated - - -

    On the second thought, adding that requires some effort for animation designers, gear designers and such. Mayber this is the main purpose for not implementing that as of yet.
    What animations could you possibly be talking about? Every race has at least one caster and one melee class. Unless something has changed, CLASSES do not have unique casting animations, RACES do. So the same animations used on a tauren druid work perfectly fine if they introduced a tauren mage. Tauren warriors have been able to use daggers since vanilla, so they have all the attack animations they need to be rogues. Same goes for every other race/class combo you can think of. The underlying race already has all the animations necessary.
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  4. #4
    Titan Grimbold21's Avatar
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    Sure as long as gnomes are removed first

  5. #5
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Some things simply can not exist: Draenei Warlocks would be killed on sight pretty much and Night Elf Warlocks would not fare any better.

    Goblin Druids? Just no.

    Really we already have quite a few concessions, such as Tauren Paladins. I don't think it would be good to turn lore into a total joke by adding combos that make no sense whatsoever and need a huge lore concessions to accept.

  6. #6
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    No. No gnome Paladins in this life or any other.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by endersblade View Post
    What animations could you possibly be talking about? Every race has at least one caster and one melee class. Unless something has changed, CLASSES do not have unique casting animations, RACES do. So the same animations used on a tauren druid work perfectly fine if they introduced a tauren mage. Tauren warriors have been able to use daggers since vanilla, so they have all the attack animations they need to be rogues. Same goes for every other race/class combo you can think of. The underlying race already has all the animations necessary.
    First to come to my mind is enha shaman.
    SS and LL have unique motion animations. Totems are different for each race. Most skills have some lightning/blinking/glowing visual upon use or constantly.
    Now i'm not software specialist, but i bet that requires some sort of work to implement on different race.
    Gear also look quite different on each race.

    If not that, i think they've implemented this already. It has been major advertisement point for Cata, when they allowed more race/class combos.
    They can use it again to attract customers.

  8. #8
    The Insane Aeula's Avatar
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    Tauren can be Paladins, lore is dead.

    Let anyone be anything. It's been time since cata.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidax View Post
    Some things simply can not exist: Draenei Warlocks would be killed on sight pretty much and Night Elf Warlocks would not fare any better.

    Goblin Druids? Just no.

    Really we already have quite a few concessions, such as Tauren Paladins. I don't think it would be good to turn lore into a total joke by adding combos that make no sense whatsoever and need a huge lore concessions to accept.
    Well, we have pink haired female gnome fury TG warriors out there. If that isn't ridiculous, what is?

    Besides, since races are so intertwined in both factions, why not they trade knowledge as well?

  10. #10
    Immortal FuxieDK's Avatar
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    Too few restrictions already.... No need to lift more restrictions..
    Fact (because I say so): TBC > Cata > Legion > ShaLa > MoP > DF > BfA > WoD = WotLK

    My pet collection --> http://www.warcraftpets.com/collection/FuxieDK/

  11. #11
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidax View Post
    Some things simply can not exist: Draenei Warlocks would be killed on sight pretty much and Night Elf Warlocks would not fare any better.

    Goblin Druids? Just no.

    Really we already have quite a few concessions, such as Tauren Paladins. I don't think it would be good to turn lore into a total joke by adding combos that make no sense whatsoever and need a huge lore concessions to accept.
    I don't think draenei warlocks are inherently any sillier than orc warlocks; a race enslaved by demons, with their previous Warchief going as far as indicting Thrall for "letting warlocks practice freely under Orgrimmar". I also don't feel as if goblin druids would be too difficult, if we assume that a person that should become something because of who they are and not what they are.

    "I'm sorry, Mr. Bilge Flangewix, but we can't train you to be a paladin because goblins are all self-serving, money-obsessed thieves".

    It's effectively judging a person on their race... And I'm not sure that's palatable to anyone.

    As for the lore being a total joke; well, we're already there thanks to an orc fetish that saw the writers (a term I use very loosely) drag everyone into a ridiculous alternate universe.

  12. #12
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    I get that there's lore, but it's also a game. Restricting classes to certain races restricts the potential enjoyment people can get out of the game. My favourite race are the Gnomes, and two of my favourite classes are hunters and druids. Yet I can't play as a Gnome hunter or druid because.. reasons. It's just silly to me. I love the lore, the worldbuilding in this game is a huge part of what makes it great.. But there's already so much that conflicts and so many other existing race/class combinations that don't make any sense.

    Even taking lore into consideration, surely it's not a stretch to allow players to imagine that your Gnome (for example) was "the first of his/her kind to take an interest in Druidism". You wouldn't even need to create an existing druid society within the Gnomes, you could just have the druid trainer in their starting area be a Night Elf (like how the monk trainer is a Pandaren). The hunter trainer could be a Dwarf. And so on and so forth.

  13. #13
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Graysmith View Post
    Restricting classes to certain races restricts the potential enjoyment people can get out of the game.
    Ultimately, that's my view on the subject in a nutshell.

  14. #14
    The Unstoppable Force Gaidax's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Amulree View Post
    I don't think draenei warlocks are inherently any sillier than orc warlocks; a race enslaved by demons, with their previous Warchief going as far as indicting Thrall for "letting warlocks practice freely under Orgrimmar". I also don't feel as if goblin druids would be too difficult, if we assume that a person that should become something because of who they are and not what they are.
    It's on a whole other level with Draenei, really, besides Orc Warlocks are pretty much remnants of their very warlocky and very recent past, while Draenei Warlocks simply do not exist and never existed in the Draenei to begin with for thousands of years.

    The whole point of Draenei as a whole that they chose not to be warlocks pretty much and that is why they got exiled.


    Restricting "feature X" restricts the potential enjoyment people can get out of the game - is a terrible excuse to implement things... Restricting ability to have a spell which oneshots everything within half a kilometer and demolishes buildings restricts potential enjoyment people can get out of the game too.

    Restrictions exist for reason, otherwise there would be a lot of mess, because while lifting a restriction would make some people happy, it would raise others in arms too. For example, making Draenei Warlocks happen would instantly crash upon Blizzard with a tsunami of LORELOL feedback and they are already walking a very fine line there with this whole Legion transcending all realities and alternate timelines thing that they can barely understand themselves at this point.

    Heck, many people consider WoD to be a lore Armageddon as is, going full bonkers free for all with it won't help.
    Last edited by Gaidax; 2015-06-22 at 11:35 AM.

  15. #15
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    No class/race restriction holds any water in the game with undead holy priests and midget death knights.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidax View Post
    Some things simply can not exist: Draenei Warlocks would be killed on sight pretty much and Night Elf Warlocks would not fare any better.

    Goblin Druids? Just no.

    Really we already have quite a few concessions, such as Tauren Paladins. I don't think it would be good to turn lore into a total joke by adding combos that make no sense whatsoever and need a huge lore concessions to accept.
    Hush yo moufies fool!

    http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments...druids/cp5as3x

    I've DREAMED of this forever!

  17. #17
    Immortal Pua's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gaidax View Post
    It's on a whole other level with Draenei, really, besides Orc Warlocks are pretty much remnants of their very warlocky and very recent past, while Draenei Warlocks simply do not exist and never existed in the Draenei to begin with for thousands of years.

    The whole point of Draenei as a whole that they chose not to be warlocks pretty much and that is why they got exiled.
    I get all that, but the story has now moved to Draenor where the orcs have completely rejected the advances of Mannoroth while the warlock of the franchise, Gul'dan, is the enemy of the entire expansion. Meanwhile, the Sargerei are draenei (not Eredar) that are practicing the warlock arts. In any event, the very existence of warlocks in the Alliance would surely turn the supposedly devout draenei off of humans, dwarves, worgen and gnomes.

    Again, I'm not trying to argue until either of us "wins". I'm simply saying that the argument for draenei despising fel magic entirely doesn't stand up to any real scrutiny, so what purpose is the restriction really serving?

  18. #18
    this would mean they'd need druid forms for everyone, which they'd never do. We want to add more fantasy to WoW not take away what little we have left and I know some class combos already make very little sense but I'd consider that a mistake not a precedence for going all out.

  19. #19
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    I've made countless of posts on the wow forums asking for this. Those that are opposed are usually opposed to several combinations already in the game.
    The story you play each expansion is lore. Race/class restrictions are from another age of warcraft which we have surpassed a long time ago. Heck, we're timetravelling/visiting alternative realities but undead paladins are impossible cuz lore? Yeah right.

    My only condition is that EMFH should be nerfed because otherwise the human population would explode if all classes can be played as a human.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Luftdot View Post

    My only condition is that EMFH should be nerfed because otherwise the human population would explode if all classes can be played as a human.
    I'd really love to see all racials made into non combat benefits only, then we'd see people playing either horde or alliance because they actually want to.

    If you feel strapped for choice on playing a race you like, for example playing druid horde side I've got a big cow or ugly troll as my options and rather than just make everyone be a druid I'd much rather see a class introduced that fits the fantasy of being a druid. It's part of what gives wow flavour, yes an old part but just because it's old and we've bent some of the rules doesn't mean we should throw it out of the window.

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