NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7094627" data-attributes="member: 5142">This poll is about like asking which a wizard gets: their spellcasting or their spellbook. Both are part and parcel of the package deal and aesthetic. That said, let's look at the "influence of WoW and Diablo" narrative, in part because the years cited are slightly off. Diablo 2 (2000) did not have a druid at launch. Diablo 2's expansion Lord of Destruction (2001) did have a druid, but its shapeshifting was not so much into animals but into were-beasts. We could still say, however, that it was a class defined by "shapeshifting," though one could build your druid without a single point in the shapeshifting talent tree, since there was also an Elemental Spells and Summoning talent trees. World of Warcraft unquestionably has a tremendous influence on popular conceptions of the druid, with its enormous (albeit gradually declining) fanbase. But WoW was not created in an isolated vacuum. World of Warcraft was released in 2004, but the World of Warcraft game builds upon and was developed simultaneously alongside Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3 was released in 2002. (The third edition of Dungeons & Dragons and it version of the druid came out in 2000.) Warcraft 3 had shapeshifting druids, though at this time, their shapeshifting was limited to a few totem animals, namely the bear and raven. ("Vanilla" WoW would introduce the panther and sea lion. Burning Crusade would introduce the "moonkin"/owlbear and the treant.) But when one looks at Warcraft 3 (and its predecessors, Warcraft 1 and 2), one can see the influence of D&D (and Warhammer, unsurprisingly given the history of the Warcraft franchise). The "druidic" Night Elves of WC3, for example, are essentially a combination and subversion of wood elves and drow. Much like drow, for example, they are "nocturnal" elves with a gendered society, being led by a matriarchal society of priestesses to their goddess with a wizardly male class (aka the druids). (This goddess Elune, however, is less indebted to Lloth, but, rather, more to Eilistraee or the Triune of elven goddesses.) But their society was not evil or underground, but noble, druidic, and in the woodlands. The point is less about the elves, but, rather, about how D&D was a tremendous influence on 90s and early '00s fantasy games. The people who played D&D were making the games, including Warcraft and Diablo.</blockquote>

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