The tauren are a fictional race of anthropomorphic bovines in the Warcraft franchise developed by Blizzard Entertainment. They were first introduced in the 2002 Warcraft III, soon after becoming a playable race in the 2004 World of Warcraft. Members of the Horde faction, they are nevertheless a gentle and peaceful race that chooses to live in harmony with nature, but are powerful when provoked. The tauren have received praise for their environmentally positive traits and unsexualized design, in which females of the species are similarly large-bodied and animalistic as the males. However, Blizzard has also been accused of cultural appropriation of Native Americans when designing their clothing, buildings and culture.

Background

Tauren are very large in size compared to humans, with males reaching up to 10 feet tall and females, 9 feet. Their hands have three fingers, while their feet are hooves. Males are bulky, muscular and covered in fur with cow-like colors and patterns. They have a hunched posture, hairy mane, and horned head. While female tauren are still bulky, they are noticeably slimmer and more upright in posture, with smaller manes.

In combat, the tauren's trademark weapon is the totem pole, which they use both for religious meditation purposes and as a club-type weapon. An additional signature weapon is the tauren halberd, which utilize wooden handles and massive blades.

Appearances

The tauren were first introduced in Warcraft III as the "tauren warrior" class, one of the game's strongest melee units. In World of Warcraft, the city of Thunder Bluff, located on the plains of Mulgore, was introduced as their capital. In Heroes of the Storm, E.T.C., or Elite Tauren Chieftain, an electric guitar-playing tauren and the mascot of the eponymous Blizzard employee rock band, appeared as a playable hero.^[1] The Highmountain Tauren, a group of tauren with elk-like antlers, were introduced with the 2016 World of Warcraft: Legion.^[2]

Development

The tauren paladin class was introduced in the 2010 World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion pack to add additional gameplay flexibility.^[3] In 2014, male tauren were given a character model redesign in World of Warcraft to add facial expressions and make them more realistic,^[4] while female tauren followed months later.^[5] While tauren have long been limited to more warrior-like classes, the 2022 Dragonflight expansion pack allowed players to become a tauren rogue, something long thought to be a joke due to their large size, hooves, and general lack of stealth.^[6]

Reception

The Warcraft Civilization compares tauren to minotaurs from Greek mythology, calling them evidence of how eclectic World of Warcraft is in its design.^[7] It notes that while tauren are known as placid and reliable, they still face racial prejudice.^[8]

Digital Culture, Play, and Identity remarks that female tauren are a major exception to the "model-like females" that the World of Warcraft players must choose to play as, even in monster races, due to their commercial appeal. Calling them the most alienated from the traditional notion of femininity, it cites their "almost-plump" body, hooves, and cow-like noses as features that would typically be perceived as "ugly", giving players more variation in looks.^[9]

The tauren's use of Native American imagery was criticized as insulting. Colin Campbell of Polygon described it as "appropriated" and a poor, exaggerated depiction.^[10] Digital Culture states that the depiction of Horde culture, including the tauren, was "not nuanced", describing them as shallow cultural stereotypes and akin to colonial representations of primitive peoples. The book says that tauren walk the line between "quiet and peaceful" and "implacable" foes who "smash their enemies under hoof", as opposed to the more pseudo-Western Alliance.^[11] Philip Michael Alexander complained in Identity and Collaboration in World of Warcraft that the tauren seemed like a good idea for a fictional race until he saw how they "lampooned" plains Indian culture, calling it "shockingly similar" to real life. Noting that they were even displaced from their homeland, he described their characterization as "almost too lazy" and said that it made him change his character's race away from tauren.^[12]

In a gameplay sense, Patricio Kobek of TheGamer stated that, in World of Warcraft, tauren were best as druids, their exclusive class in the Horde, with their other classes not being as strong as other races in high-level play. He described them as the game's best tanks.^[13]

The tauren Gamon gained notoriety as the most-killed NPC in World of Warcraft, causing him to become an Internet meme and be included as an official trading card with the quote "not again!" In Cataclysm, he was turned into a Level 85 raid boss, later becoming Level 90 in Mists of Pandaria. He was later subdued and tied to a tree by the orc warchief Garrosh Hellscream.^[14]

References