Posts with tag Tauren

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement, and restoration shaman. Josh Myers once only tackled the hard questions about enhancement but has recently expanded his sphere of responsibility to all shaman DPS specs. (And no, two-handed enhancement is still never coming back.)

I really like Tauren. If I had my way, the Horde would be comprised of six different tribes of Tauren who spent most of their days participating in competitive flower picking and saying "Walk with the Earthmother." Unfortunately, the Herd is not a real faction, and most people aren't Tauren.

While some players make racial choices for game immersion or fun, there are players who choose their character's race for the best performance. A tank might choose Tauren for the 5% base health bonus, a PVPer might choose human for the extra trinket slot, and a healer might choose Blood Elf for the 2-minute cooldown mana return. For Horde elemental shaman, there's a reason to play any of the four available options, but the choice is largely up to your playstyle.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

The Horde has experienced a number of dramatic changes in the Cataclysm expansion. In vanilla, the Horde was struggling, largely due to a lack of resources. In Cataclysm, largely due to Garrosh Hellscream's efforts, the Horde has expanded its borders. With the help of the goblins, Azshara is being mined for a wealth of resources, and land is being grabbed all over Kalimdor. Things are beginning to look up for the Horde -- well, if you're in Orgrimmar. Elsewhere, the land is riddled with turmoil and tragedy.

If you're roleplaying a tauren, the events of Cataclysm are a bitter pill to swallow. A leader has been lost, entire settlements have been wiped from the map, racial infighting between the Grimtotem and the tauren of Thunder Bluff continues to rage. Yet in between it all are moments of hope -- and it's up to roleplayers to decide whether to wallow in the sorrow, fight back in fury, or simply try and keep an optimistic amidst it all.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

He befriends those who might be his enemies, yet he is unafraid to strike down those who harm his people, his students, even his allies. Elderly, he has but recently become a druid; his meteoric rise to the rank of Archdruid is a testament to his strength of character and his sincere desire to achieve balance in all things. A childhood friend of Cairne Bloodhoof, in that worthy's death, he has become the Old Bull of his people, even as Cairne's son Baine has taken the role of leader.

Today, while Baine rules, it is Hamuul Runetotem who is the heart of the shu'halo, the tauren people. And he does not like what he is seeing.

Stevie Nix - Baine Bloodhoof: As Our Fathers Before Us

Hamuul shook his head as if to clear it. "We existed in a time before the coming of the orcs, if you'll remember. Your father may have owed a debt to Thrall for all he did for our people, but this is a new Horde. I have heard whispers of other tauren. Some are wondering if this Horde is really something we should be a part of anymore." He snorted. "The Horde has done much and we owe much to it, but you must admit that their sentiments are not completely without merit."

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Hammul does not pretend to perfection, and while he is wise, he admits to all the shocks that flesh is heir to and all the emotion a shu'halo can face dealing with the chaos of the world while attempting to honor the Earthmother.

The tauren have witnessed great change within their own society and culture with the coming of the cataclysm, from political upheaval and great sadness to unbearable loss. With the death of Cairne Bloodhoof, the tauren people turned to his son, Baine, with reverence and hope that he would lead in his father's footsteps and be as great a high chieftain. With the ascension of Garrosh Hellscream to warchief and the bonds that held the orcs and the tauren together stretching thinner, Baine must work through his troubles and the troubles of the tauren people and help hold the Horde together.

Baine Bloodhoof: As Our Fathers Before Us by Stevie Nix (not Stevie Nicks) begins with Durotar in dire straights. The goblins, now fully members of the Horde, have gummed up the Southfury river and made the water undrinkable. Garrosh has come to Mulgore to work with the tauren to begin water shipments to Durotar of fresh, clean water. Attacks on these water caravans, now frequent, pose a huge threat to the survivability of Orgrimmar. Hamuul Runetotem does not let his emotions get in the way as he confides in Baine that his love for Garrosh is lax. Baine insists that despite Garrosh's foolishness, the tauren are to remain as members of the Horde, just as his father had wanted.

Check out the full story, Baine Bloodhoof: As Our Fathers Before Us, for some intriguing and action-packed new lore about our favorite tauren's son and his rise to chieftain.

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

We talked about their origins last week (although that was primarily speculation), and we've talked about their politics and how they fit within the Horde. We've discussed Cairne and his son Baine, the great leaders of their people, and Magatha, the greatest living villain. But what of the shu'halo, the tauren people themselves? Who are they?

The tauren today are in a very unusual position. They revere the Earthmother and yet are allied to people who stripmine her very flesh to plunder her resources, chop down her forests, and poison her creatures with plague. Former nomads, harried by enemies, they now reside in their ancestral homeland due to those same alliances. The Horde gave them much and now asks for much. For the tauren, the shu'halo, the debt owed when Thrall and his people helped them reach their promised land has never faded. But who were they before it?

The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Where, exactly, do tauren come from? Yes, there's the old standby about a mommy tauren and a daddy tauren -- but in a world where some beings trace their origins back to stone constructs and ancient curses while others are native and still others were altered by the Well of Eternity, the question of where a people originated can be an important and convoluted one.

The most recent Ask Creative Development thread from the official forums managed to cover a lot of subject matter, from Elune and her relationship with the Naaru to whether Forsaken priests could actually blow themselves up by channeling too much of the Holy Light. But the question and answer that most interested me was the following:

Q: What races were on Azeroth before the coming of the titans?

A: Besides the elementals, the only known sentient races on Azeroth when the titans' forces arrived to subdue the Old Gods were the trolls, the race known as "faceless ones," and the aqir. Due to the Old Gods' war against the titans, as well as the extensive terraforming that followed the war's conclusion, records of what races existed before even the Old Gods' arrival have likely been lost forever.

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Anne already discussed this to a degree, but I wanted to take a longer look at the tauren, their history and mythology, what they seem to believe about their origins, and why it might matter to this question. Where did the tauren come from?

Please remember the rules. This is all speculation, and while I try and build it on the framework of the lore we're supplied in game, I'm going to end up somewhere that is absolutely not at all in game.

Last week, we discussed the timelines of gnomes and dwarves, two races that recently discovered their roots. Though the dwarves and gnomes were originally Titan creations, today we're going to talk about a race that has simply been here since the beginning -- the tauren. Much like the night elves, the tauren have a gigantic chunk of history that is simply ... missing, though the tauren have more of an explanation for that absence of information than their night elf counterparts.

For tauren roleplayers, however, the past isn't really an issue so much as current events -- and the tauren race has a lot to think about. The tauren have often been thought of as the "nicest" of the Horde races, peaceful and generally kind to all. That's what makes what happens to the tauren race in Cataclysm twice as bitter -- their people turned on, their leader killed in cold blood, and their home under siege. Despite all this, the tauren remain staunch allies of the Horde, willing to lay down their lives for honor.

With all the upheaval regarding death knight abilities and DPS happening right now, it's sometimes a good idea to go back to the basics and figure out some of the stuff that underlies a good, solid death knight.

One of the most basic cornerstones of choosing a death knight is choosing your race. Since every single race can be a death knight, you have your pick, and since there's a race change service, you don't even have to stay the same race forever. Personally, I tend to say that you choose whatever race feels right for you -- but for those who want to pick a race (or change your current race) based on what racials are "best," this guide is for you.

The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? What secrets does the game still hold? If you enjoyed Patches of Yesteryear, you're going to love this.

This week's Archivist will be tackling World of Warcraft patch 1.1. Up until this point, we'd been mired in alpha and beta patches, examining the game before the masses got its grubby mitts on it. Patch 1.1 is the first 1.x version of the game, making it the first version of the client made available for open release to the public. However, this patch was released prior to the official launch of the game -- those of you that participated in the open beta of World of Warcraft back in late 2004, it's this version of the game that you likely saw first.

This patch included goodies such as:

• The implementation of kodo as the replacement for Plainsrunning
• Molten Core and Onyxia's Lair were opened up
• Removal of many in-combat resurrection spells

Let's crack open the archives!

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Hey, what do you know! We had a bunch of great questions for today's Queue, which is unusual for a Monday. I'm usually picking through scraps. I think that means this week will be a good week.

Necromann asked:

Do player character hitboxes differ? For example, can you hit a tauren farther away than you can hit a gnome?

Welcome to another edition of WoW Insider's Weekly Comic, Safe Passage. This comic takes place post-Cataclysm, so there will be minor spoilers.

The first strike! A frost trap has been thrown onto the fire, blanketing them in darkness. She strikes, now within her natural element.

Check out the full comic right here, and tune in next Tuesday morning for a new page. You can also see all the previous pages in the gallery below.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like how awesome tauren paladins are.

After The Shattering hit Azeroth, it was clear that the world was never going to be the same. Entire zones were torn asunder, and everyone who can take up arms to combat Deathwing has stood up to fight. The Horde recently inducted the Sunwalkers into the fold, and they're eagerly training in the way of the Light. Now players won't be stuck with blood elves when they want to play the paladin class.

If you've been on the general forums in the past few days, you've seen some of the clever names that people have come up with for their tauren paladins. Retbull (gives you wings), Skim (Light milk), and Bovinity (divine cows) were among my personal favorites. I decided to start a new tauren paladin myself, figuring I could heal my way through the low-level dungeons and try out the new starting quests and zones at the same time. It's been years since I've played a new paladin, and it was time for a refresher course.