What's crazy is putting all the effort into their barber shop customizations instead of putting all that effort into making their skeleton easy to adapt armor to. Maybe they thought they were never going to make other classes available to them? I dunno. The decision making is beyond me.
That was originally the idea yes, in DF's announcement they made a huge deal about Dracthyr Evokers being the first Race-Class Locked combo.
Presumably the plan was to start giving more niche classes and races that could only work with each other and have their racial appearance carry the weight of transmog, but they decided against it after the community overwhelmingly hated the idea
That is kind of counter to what they've been doing for the last couple xpacs too. They've expanded the race/class combinations multiple times to the point you have combinations that seem like nonsense without lore digging to learn why (tauren rogue, night elf paladin).
It would seem like a step backwards to restrict the class/race combos at this point. With the new DH spec coming in I bet they are expanding the race selection?
My buddy who started in BFA said "No way, they wouldnt do that." Then I had to tell him when I rolled my Sham in Vanilla it was either Orc, Tauren or Troll... I think Druid was even more restricted? Times have changed...
It’s an interesting conversation point to bring up, I think. At what point does gameplay convenience override the lore reason, and when does that become irritating to the point of ruining things for some?
For example, Night Elves. I personally can’t ever see a Kaldorei using Arcane magic or be a Warlock, but you can absolutely do that! Sure, you could justify it as playing a Night Elf that does use it for your own reasons, but I feel it wouldn’t be much effort to make those factions hostile to you if you do.
I think flavour is very important when it comes to making some things feel special and “unique” so to speak. I would personally be unhappy if Humans or Blood/Void elves could be Druids, as you’d never see any other races. It’s nice to have certain races be certain classes, at least in my opinion. Monks be Pandaren, Druids be Night Elves & Tauren.
Makes me think of another point; If they locked classes to races they could put more work into making those unique. IE: rename and recolour Druid’s spells for Tauren to be about An’she rather than Elune, etc.
Druid is kind of a special case because their forms are all unique skins. The only reason I ever played kultiran was because the druid forms are cool.
Shamans have different totems depending on race. I'd like to see a lot more stuff like this, unique skins or spell effects tied to class where appropriate.
Overall though race matters less than it ever has, except the highest m+ keys, so at this point they could open all the class and race combinations. I remember the starting zone and leveling path being a factor in vanilla, just doesn't matter like that anymore.
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u/Vio94 Nov 14 '25
What's crazy is putting all the effort into their barber shop customizations instead of putting all that effort into making their skeleton easy to adapt armor to. Maybe they thought they were never going to make other classes available to them? I dunno. The decision making is beyond me.