Fussypants

Hey, @unlimitedBLACK , care to chime in on this? =) It's an interesting question! =)

Hmm. The Lorewalkers on Pandaria aren't a magical discipline. Gnomes studying magic tend to go to Dalaran, so I imagine schools in Gnomeregan focused on the sciences. Schools on Kezan... though if you can call goblin engineering scientific is a different question.

Ooh the Lorewalkers, that’s right! I forgot all about those history buffs. I do wonder if there’s a general assumption that learned people in Azeroth (excluding Pandaria) also tend to be magical people. Dalaran seems like the most book-heavy place by far

Keep in mind that a lot of folks on Azeroth also pursue craftsman trades via apprenticeships, which is really more the mode for non-magical studies in most fantasy worlds, because it doesn't rely on reading. And in a world without a printing press, books are a scarce commodity.

We see books of all shapes and sizes as doodads in WoW, so maybe illiteracy isn't the mode here as readily as it was in the Real, but certainly something to consider.

That is very true. I suppose I should amend my previous statement to say learned people in terms of literacy and scholarship (as opposed to craftsmanship) might have commonly been assumed to be magic users in some capacity.

This actually parallels quite well with how religious people have been regarded across our real world's history, now that I think about it. Knowledge has often been considered the gateway to higher powers (just as how Catholic clergymen were the only ones who could speak Latin)

Weeeellllll... Latin was the "common" tongue (common in availability, not usage) that transcended national/tribal/ethnic borders from Rome to the Reformation - and the Catholic Church made VERY few changes until then.