Hey Blizzard, could you please write Tauren characters that don’t strictly consist in being the wisest person in the room and giving you the disappointed eyes while staying mostly passive throughout the expansion because their sole reason for existing is to be the moral backbone of whatever group they’re part of
What I mean is, could you please write them as actual characters rather than as personified noble savage trope/enlightened centrism
Thanks
Tauren shouldn’t exist at all. Should have stayed with the Ogres as our siegebreaker race for the Horde. Now we have gentle giants who are not even permitted to fight back against an invading enemy worse then the Pandaren in that regard. The Shado Pan had enough of the faction war. But Baine considered his people legitemate military targets and didn’t care about the lives lost due to the alliance invading the Barrens.
Sometimes they have a fun attiude though those are often against us. 
Lasan Skyhorn is a Tauren that the Horde can be glad to have amongst its ranks. I like the cut of his jib.
We also have Ace Moonchaser. He is a Tauren who is still mad about Taurajo:
“There may be blood on the Horde’s hands, but there is no purpose in washing them until the Alliance is shattered!”
Words to live by
Agreed /10chrs
I think some of the biggest issues bleed over with how Blizzard writes alot of the story in general.
They usually only reuse the same pool of characters unless we are specifically dealing with the local inhabitants, in which they will be a part of the focus until they are forgotten when we leave or are added to the roster.
Because of this, our only Tauren are Baine, Mayla, and Ebonhorn (who is a dragon). Maybe Magatha Grimtotem will show up once every 5 years, when the writers remember this character exists. Instead of just making a new Tauren character, they just use one of these three characters.
I feel like Baine is the biggest offender here, but between him and Ebonhorn, that’s all we really get. Other races get hit pretty hard with similar issues, but the Tauren get the worst of it.
Did you somehow sleep through that entire questline last patch where Baine had to set aside his seething hatred of Centaur or something?
Or how about that other Tauren who, you know, instigated the entire expansion’s events by releasing Rhazageth. What a dumb thread.
And Baine’s other big issue is that he is a vehicle for Anduin’s rhetoric whenever they want to Wrynn-splain the Horde.
Oh I didn’t, legit one of the most embarrassing questlines I ever played through, the writers couldn’t have possibly come up with a more pathetically out of character way to try and fix Baine’s glaring issues, it felt so off it almost made me laugh
Unless you think turning Baine “Come on guys stop whining about Taurajo, we had it coming” Bloodhoof into an absurdly racist bloothirsty killing machine because a bunch of evil Centaur killed a bunch of Tauren is satisfying character development
Ah but that’s different though ! This guy was a Grimtotem. Grimtotem bad. Tauren gentle giants except for Grimtotem because Grimtotem seek power, so Grimtotem bad (also works for the Bloodtotem). Or maybe you missed the last 20 years of Tauren-related narratives ?
I’d argue this is what happens when you don’t make characters, but caricatures of races as the primary drivers of the narrative.
Baine wasn’t allowed to be the character Baine, he was instead “what tauren characters are supposed to be”, and the result is that if a tauren isn’t like Baine they either need to be special or evil.
We ignored it because like always he failed at what he tried to do. Bovan is dead and the Windtotem tribe is leaderless.
Most people who complain about Tauren don’t actually know Tauren lore or have never played them. I think the biggest issue Tauren have is that they haven’t been given lore in years, so what they have is suited for Thrall’s Horde, as opposed to the Horde most people are used to these days.
The Baine quest chain recently gave a lot of good context as to why he and the Tauren are the way they are, and even gave them nuance in the form of their own prejudice… but that doesn’t fit the narrative on these forums so it was barely talked about.
Tauren have no lore. They only exist so that the Horde isn’t burning all the bridges towards the alliance like it happened with Garrosh and Sylvanas. Blizzard made it clear they are the race to lend an olive branch to Anduin and Jaina when the plot demands it.
I’m familiar with Tauren lore, or lack thereof. The cool thing about the questline was the little callback to WC3 and getting to interact with a proper tribe (more often than not, “Tauren tribes” are literally just last names). But it certainly didn’t add anything substantial to the Tauren-Centaur context we all knew about, and the way Baine was handled was just ridiculous.
The biggest issue Tauren have is Baine. WoW has a history of giving all the available screentime to the racial leaders, therefore mechanically reducing a race’s characterization to that of its leader ; it’s especially true Horde-side, with the Tauren being among the most telling examples, to the point where there isn’t a single truly relevant Tauren character besides Baine and arguably Dezco. And Baine being what he is… This is a problem. That’s why a having a character like Lasan introduced was exhilirating, even though technically, there’s nothing incredibly spectacular about him. He’s just cool. But that’s not something we’re used to.
No wonder why people are feeling super let down with Ebyssian’s arc, even people who were initially thrilled by the perspective of him becoming the Aspect. Ebyssian just got the Baine treatment, that is to say, putting the emphasis on the other characters’ (here, Sabellian and Wrathion) flaws so that the Tauren guy can be the voice of reason and display obvious moral superiority.
Or races that are nothing BUT caricatures? Yeah, Gnomes and Goblins are the top of that list. But Draenei seem to exist for no other reason than to mock Slavic accents.
You know, this all reminds me about how disappointed I was that they have done next to nothing with Gamon.
He started out as a low level rogue quest target, then into a max level elite, and from there he became a target of the Kor’kron. Finally, after all of this, he became the Hero of Orgrimmar.
He was turned from a meme into something of an actual character in MoP, don’t forget that for all of the “Gamon will save us” jokes, that he is canonically the character who killed Nazgrim.
And that’s where the issues arise; I loved his characterization in MoP and was hoping that post SoO that he’d become a more active character in the lore, but in Warlords he only showed up for 5 seconds to give you a mission at your garrison tavern, in Legion he only showed up for Vol’jin’s funeral, in BfA he only showed up as a corrupted version of himself in the Vision of Orgrimmar, and now he’s just a random npc who visits the Trading Post asking for a new axe.
With the dialogue between Nazgrim and Gamon, I assumed that there was going to be some more background between the two, since they act like they are very familiar with each other (maybe even somewhat friends). He has had literally no reaction to Nazgrim coming back as a death knight.
Gamon said he would cleave orc skulls for every time he had been put down, and did nothing in the expansion that involved fighting evil orcs.
They took what could’ve been a more active Tauren warrior with a “zero to hero” story and traded one joke for another.
Read above. They act like it was random and “Out of character” for Baine. As if the dude never has anger. We’re shown an alternate timeline Baine at one point that killed Garrosh and took over the Horde as a conquering warlord. Our Baine reflects on how a large part of him wanted to do just that but held back from it. Baine has had a great deal of cringe writing over the years. But the dude who was almost kidnapped and eaten by centaurs having a great deal of prejudice against centaurs compared to humans who have actually only ever helped him outside of their attack on Taurajo is NOT out of character. But people like OP just want to whine ad nauseum rather than actually examine the lore.
I’m actually Slavic. Don’t use my people to virtue signal, thank you.
Concession accepted, have a nice day.