Kul Tirans and Druidism

With the (technically not officially confirmed, but definitely confirmed through datamining) addition of Mag'har Orcs as the Horde's fourth allied race, there's a fair amount of speculation around the notion that the Alliance could get Kul Tiran humans.

First off, this would balance the ratio of Orcs and Humans (though you could argue that Worgen and Undead are also kind of human as well,) which is kind of a theme in Warcraft. It would also make the Horde's courting of the Zandalari by going to Zandalar kind of balanced with the Alliance truly integrating (re-integrating, really) Kul Tiras. The only reason why you might not think of this is if you were to assume that the general playable race of "Human" covers all of humanity. But the Allied Races of course are all about respecting the different history and aesthetics of different branches of races, and someone from Kul Tiras is going to have a very different history than someone from Stormwind (one thing that doesn't come up often is how most humans from Stormwind probably spent a long time in exile after the First War.)

On top of that, Blizzard has gone out of its way to give Kul Tirans a slightly different physiology - it doesn't look universal - some NPCs look like your standard humans - but there are plenty of extra-burly characters (also some extra-scrawny) that have been showcased in Kul Tiras.

So I think the probability of Kul Tirans being the fourth Alliance allied race is pretty high.

On top of that, however, is a rumor that they might get Druids.

Druids are one of those classes in WoW that are much more limited. Unlike Warriors or Mages, Druidism has historically been considered part of a specific tradition, only practiced in a few cultures. In Vanilla, only one race per faction could be Druids. I suspect this was in part because they didn't want to have to make a ton of animal forms for every race, but as their ambitions and certainly resources have grown, they have brought forth a lot of new Druids.

And while the Highmountain druids mostly just used the Tauren druid forms, adding moose antlers and changing the travel forms, we can see that with the Zandalari they're going in a radically different direction, even making the "Bear," "Cat," and "Moonkin" forms into entirely different animals (everyone's a dinosaur!)

So how might Kul Tirans be connected to Druidism?

Well, Kul Tiras was founded originally by Gilneans who sailed south to the island from their old country (fitting, as Gilneas is probably the second-most naval-oriented human nation.) Gilneas, perhaps owing to the druidic forest in the south that corresponded to the one in the Emerald Dream where the original Night Elf Worgen were imprisoned, had a tradition of Harvest Witches, who would bless the crops and draw forth a healthy harvest. Their magic didn't really go much beyond that, but these Harvest Witches who fell to the Worgen curse found that their connection with nature combined with the training of the Night Elves allowed them to become full-fledged Druids.

Is it possible that they might have developed Druidism on their own?

There's a question to be asked about the racial restriction on Druidism: is it purely cultural, or is it physiological?

Because there's actually one big distinction that all the Druid races, except the Worgen, share: They're not Titanforged.

Trolls were the original humanoid race on Azeroth (probably - it could have been Furbolgs or one of the nonplayable races.) As far as we know, the Trolls were not created - they simply evolved as organic life, perhaps from elementals like the Proto-drakes or simply from some earlier creatures. Night Elves came to be after a group of Trolls settled around the Well of Eternity. Similarly, the Tauren were Yaungol - another presumably naturally-evolved race - who were likewise transformed by the Well (though less dramatically, I'd say.) The Highmountain are of course just a group of Tauren whose ancestor, Huln, was blessed by Cenarius.

And Worgen are afflicted with a curse that effectively forces them into a druidic shapeshift form - a curse that wasn't ever intended as a curse, just a druidic practice that got out of control.

So the question is: barring some kind of forced Druidic connection like the Worgen, are artificial creations like humans incapable of connecting with nature enough to be Druids?

This question might have been simpler to answer before we know that Azeroth was a nascent Titan. At this point, it's clear that every playable race has a Titanic connection - there are the Titanforged descendants like Humans and Dwarves, the kinda-sorta Titanforged Orcs, and all the others evolved on planets with a Titan Soul in the center. So perhaps the distinction between Titanforged and naturally-evolved races is not so profound. We know of two examples of races with radically different histories producing offspring - Orc and Draenei have produced at least two hybrids: Garona and Lantressor. Likewise, there's a long history of half-elves with ancestry from both human lands and Quel'thalas (Alodi and Arator being examples.) If these people are so widely distinct (being from different planets even) and yet are still able to reproduce, one has to imagine that the physiological differences are really only surface-level, and thus probably not enough to bar the use of any particular magic.

So it's probably more cultural, and that to me says that there's nothing preventing a culture from developing a tradition on its own.

Troll Druids, and especially Zandalari Troll Druids, seem to have developed their Druidic tradition independent of the Cenarion Circle, based more around their connection to the Loa. Is it possible then that the humans of Kul Tiras discovered their own form of Druidic magic, perhaps extrapolating from the nature magic of their Harvest Witches - a tradition they likely carried with them from Gilneas?

Time will tell.