Originally Posted by
Urpriest
Not Epic Feats. Well, not worthwhile Epic Feats. The whole reason Epic Feats are Epic Feats is in order to keep them out of the hands of nonepic characters.
The Planar Shepherd was much later in 3.5, and in Eberron. I presume you know what power creep is?
Though really, this isn't even a situation of power creep. MoMF doesn't get Magical Beasts because they aren't a meaningful addition to the toolbox and because of the changes to the beast type. This applies to many of the things they don't get from Shifters, with other things being left out due to being unthematic with the Druidic rebranding of the class (Undead, Constructs) or moved later because it makes sense to order things by the quality of the abilities they get, rather than by how "strange" they are, which seems to be the reigning logic in the case of the Shifter.
Rebranding the Shifter into a Druid-focused form allowed them to make its signature ability an add-on to Wild Shape rather than a separate ability that just traded out with Wild Shape in an unnecessarily complex way. It also opened up the design space for other classes that used different shape-shifting methods, like Master Transmorgrifist for casters or Warshaper for Alternate Form users. These specialized classes generally fit much better than Shifter, with its grab-bag of shapeshifting versatility increases that didn't make much sense on, for example, a werewolf.