World of Warcraft players long believed that Tauren Rogues would never happen before Dragonflight proved them wrong, and now an official Rogue Trainer showed up in Thunder Bluff to teach his fellow Tauren the way of the shadows. Over the course of its history, World of Warcraft added new race and class combinations more often than not, introducing the latest batch with the release of Dragonflight by finally making Mages, Rogues, and Priests available to any race. An extremely popular consequence of this has been the sudden possibility of making Draenei and Tauren Rogues.
Rogues in World of Warcraft have evolved their class from what it used to be when Legion revamped the Combat specialization into Outlaw. While many Combat Rogues still mourn the loss of their niche, adding the swashbuckling pirate identity to Rogues has ultimately consolidated the different Rogue identities in World of Warcraft. An iconic example of these Outlaws used to be Mr. Smite, the first mate of Captain Greenskin, and arguably a precursor of sorts to modern-day Tauren Rogues – even if he used two-handed weapons in his Deadmines debut.
The Public Test Realm for World of Warcraft's Patch 10.0.5 makes Tauren Rogues all the more official, as it adds a rather witty character in Thunder Bluff to serve as its Rogue Trainer. Called Boarton Shadetotem, he welcomes his fellow Tauren who have chosen to step into the shadows, and pokes fun at the absurdity of the lumbering Tauren excelling in the role of stealthy assassins. As many World of Warcraft fans would agree, there is no one better to become a Rogue than someone already covered in hide.
Footage of the new NPC was shared by tenthousandthousand on the official World of Warcraft subreddit, where it garnered a lot of interest from other World of Warcraft players. It's not every day one sees a Tauren Rogue, and many jokingly argued that Boarton Shadetotem has been there since the days of Vanilla, and that it only took him two decades to finally come out of stealth. With the Grimtotems canonically using shadow magic and Rogue abilities, the addition of Tauren Rogues is backed by a lot of precedent beyond just having a few examples of its swashbuckling archetype.
Hilariously, the Rogue Trainers for Draenei in Patch 10.0.5 appear to be space pirates, making it readily apparent that Blizzard wants to add some light-hearted flair for these unorthodox race and class combinations. With cross-faction guilds coming to World of Warcraft in the near future, a new era of unprecedented player choice is in store, and the fans couldn't be more excited.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is available now for PC.