A set of Warcraft characters done up by Luxarman Illustration twitter.com/Luxar92
Specifically A Night Elf Shaman, Night Elf Paladin, Undead Paladin, & Troll Necromancer. Warcraft players can probably note those aren’t currently choices and while it is always a favorite pastime of fans to advocate for the expansion of race/class combos, in this particular instance I wanted to demonstrate what I think World of Warcraft could have launched with instead of now needing to inject new lore.
For instance, I think no one would have blinked twice if Night Elves had launched with shamans, its just that Blizzard toyed with the idea of making Shamans/Paladin faction exclusive at first (ultimately proving incapable to balance). Night Elf fans love to have their cake and eat too, taking one off comment from Grom Hellscream about being “more savage than High Elves” and looking at some concept art displaying this idea more thoroughly. In any case the line between Shamanism and Druidism has always been thin in their themes of balance and reverence for nature (heck we got fire elemental druids not too long ago).
In particular I thought it appropriate for Night Elf totems to carry their theme of animals since we saw exploration of “animal totems” with every Night Elf being assigned a spirit animal (in concept art) and every Druid formerly belonging to a “totem”. The totems also literally root themselves in the ground like plants, since we carve things when you can grow them?
Next is the Paladin of Elune, much like Blood Elf “Blood Knights”, Tauren “Sun Walkers”, or Zandalarri “Prelates”; I don’t consider a stretch that the armored, bow wielding, priestess we saw in Warcraft 3 would have been just as relevant to transfer into the “Paladin” archetype as they were for the clothing wearing “Priest”.
In fact I think this would have more properly balanced the initial release with 3 Horde Shaman to the only 2 Paladin races available. But Blizzard was still particular about Paladins belonging only to the lineage of the Silver Hand at the time (even Dwarves were a stretch) and hadn’t yet budged that their powers could come from anything but “The Light”.
But that brings us to the Undead Paladin, or more appropriately an “Anti-Paladin/ Dark Knight” as seen the corrupted nature of her armor and former symbols of holiness. Again working off the principle that the classes weren’t at first faction restricted, I believe Undead would have been the first choice for the Horde at launch. Remember that the idea of Troll Prelates/Freethinkers and Tauren Sun-Walkers wouldn’t be fathomed for several years. For the sake of balance, I believe Blizzard reluctantly gave Undead priests and would have preferred they use only shadow if they had the time to give every spell an alternate but equal “flavor” (like simply changing spell effects to shadowy magic). But since Undead can canonically wield the Light, gloves are off.
Now its at this point I could go on a long technical diatribe about The Light and the fact we’ve actually seen a lot more undead paladin ncps than priests, but I would have actually liked them to wield “Unholy” Light like we see with the fallen crusaders in Icecrown and skip the whole debate.
For the character in particular, I also added stitched-on elf ears and bolted-on metal elf eyebrows. Another dream of mine in Classic was Forsaken elves. Not the pale, beautiful, “turn me into a necrophiliac” dark rangers or death knights seen today or the want for the Vampiric San’layn as an “allied race” in the future. Simply I would have liked for the feature option to give Forsaken long ears, much like what we seen in the Wretched models. What with having Scourged 90% of the High Elf population and all. Though this Undead’s past as an elf is suspect.
Lastly we have a Troll Necromancer. I think Necromancer and Warlock should have stood as faction specific “mirror” classes at Warcraft’s launch. Necromancers belonging to the Horde and using Frost (”Chill of Death” theme, like Death Knights) and/or Nature (disease/unholy, again like Death Knights) to contrast shadow/fire of warlocks.
Obviously summoning undead minions instead of demons (Banshee/Succubus, Crypstalker/felhound, Abomination/Doomguard ect.) but sharing the same gear. It simply seems like necromancy would be slightly less taboo for the Horde than the corruption caused by warlocks, as well as something the Forsaken Liches, Orc Necrolytes, & Troll Witch Doctors were already well suited for.
As for the character himself, I took the opportunity to “trollize” the classic Warcraft 3 necromancer look, including adding some Hakkari influence to the staff.
Expect more in the future.
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5 years, 10 months ago
16 Mar 2019 15:39 CET
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