Shadowlands customization- Worgen Tails

Community General Discussion
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Nah, actually pretty normal. Werewolves don’t have tails. In fact, here’s a list I compiled for another thread.

Folklore

All werewolves in folklore. That’s a rather bold statement. Perhaps the Benandanti witches and Le Bete du Gevaudan, given their forms are that of true beasts. But when it comes to the humanoid lycanthropes, such as the depictions of Lycaon and Gilles Garnier, they are either depicted as wolfish men, or completely wolf. I have yet to see the modern werewolf, the humanoid wolf with a tail - basically a furry - in oldworld folklore.

Classic Pop Culture

Then in pop culture, we have quite the mix. We have the wolf-man, the man with wolfish features, as depicted in The Wolfman (1941), The Werewolf (1956), I was a Teenaged Werewolf (1957), Dark Shadows (1966), or Teen Wolf (1985). The other is the werewolf, the humanoid wolf, as seen in American Werewolf in London (1981), The Howling (1981), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), Silver Bullet (1985) or even the book it was based on; Cycle of the Werewolf (1983).
https://s3.amazonaws.com/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1524052373r/25396174.jpg?v=1524052376767.png

Modern Pop Culture

Notably, none of these had tails. Moving on into the modern age of werewolves, we have the tabletop RPG Werewolf: the Apocalypse (1992) , which features werewolves with tails. Which in turn inspired the Underworld franchise (2003-2016), featuring both the “werewolf” and the “lycan”, neither of which have tails. And of course, eventually, vanilla World of Warcraft launches in 2004, adding the first worgen in Shadowfang Keep, Silverpine, and Duskwood.

The Worgen

For the record, while all of them differ in their own ways (see TV Tropes "Our Werewolves are Different) most werewolves in folklore, literature, and film - that I have seen - are tailless. Regardless, worgen have been tailless since their creation fifteen years ago.

Micky Neilson - a werewolf fan who grew up on The Howling - was Story and Lord Dev at the time, and wrote Curse of the Worgen in 2011 with James Waugh and DC Comics. Neilson even went on to write for the “The Howling: Revenge of the Wolf Queen” eight-part comic series in 2017, and write his own werewolf trilogy “The Turning” in 2016-2019.

None of which feature tails. The Worgen has every reason to be tailless, and Blizzard has every right to keep it as such. Some of - if not all - the greatest works of werewolf fiction feature the tailless werewolf, and - as cool as tails look and feel - I appreciate their decision in vanilla WoW.

Worgen are Werewolves
  • No tail
  • Shapeshifter
  • Relation to the Moon
  • Wolfsbane weakness
  • Curse spread by bite
  • Rage problem
  • Predatory Instincts
Worgen don't have tails

So yeah, actually pretty normal. Y’know what would be weird though? A worgen with a tail.

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