In a recent discussion off forum, I was talking about how the Tauren used to be engineers: an aspect long forgotten in the wake of Blood Elf artificers, Forsaken alchemy, Goblin tinkers, and Iron Horde mass production.
From the original manual:
The Tauren created the great and long lasting elevators of the Great Lift and Highmountain in ages past, and Thunder Bluff more recently. These are not small feats of engineering. Their hunters started with guns, not bows (along with dwarves the only original races to do so) and Mulgore is populated with windmills.
Are they a Tinker tech society? No. But engineering is an ancient interest of theirs and if we want them to move past the NatAm pastiche, it’s a great opportunity for growth in the lore.
What makes you think they invented any of their technology? They had access to the Horde and Goblins that helped build Orgrimmar. It’s not a stretch to say they helped the Taruen establish their own city.
You mean aside from the fact that it doesn’t look like any Goblin tech ever?
That there’s similar technology in Highmountain, and I’m pretty sure the Great Lift is from ancient times not a modern construct, though I could be wrong about the latter.
It’s not really surprising that they’d have a reasonable degree of mechanical acumen. After all, they’re descended from the yaungol, who figured out how to pump oil from the ground with what amount to wind-driven rigs and use said oil in the fabrication of various explosive and incendiary weapons for fighting the mantid.
It seems to be more wooden than what you’d expect, but it’s still engineering, right? I think expanding on Tauren ‘technology’ would certainly bring a different look on how non -Goblin races build things.
I’m not sure if there is even any Lore around tinkering like that either. But humans often make constructs out of metal and wood so its safe to say they’ve doing something similar
Just imagine if we went like alternative indigenous 17th century futurism with Tauren tech and got to see Tauren flying machines – how cool would that be?
I’m so happy to see somebody else who recognizes the Engineering genius of the Tauren! While they certainly don’t have the same sci-fi feel of goblins and gnomes, the Tauren are still expert engineers who have done a number of amazing feats, especially when you consider the difficulty of achieving them without magic. Which we know the Tauren don’t make use of as they don’t use Shamanism in that sort of way. Things like the Great Lift, and the city of Thunder Bluff (especially the great totem atop it) are all massive undertakings that would not be easily done given the sheer scale of them. I feel they’ve been greatly underestimated in what they’ve been able to do with just raw ingenuity and technical know how without the use of magic, or having to piggyback off of other (titanic) sources.
Also I would love to see a Tauren take on things like a Large Ship or a Flying Machine / Airship. Their certainly capable engineers, and would love to see things expanded in a way that’s not just more flavors of robotics and steampunk.
It is when some of these lifts and such predate the Horde. In Highmountain we see most of the same tauren lift-tech we see on Kalimdor, and they were closed off from the main race before there was a Horde. Likewise, we have tauren-like windmills with the taunka in Taunka’le village, which was also cut off from the wider societies. It’s a safe assumption from there that the Kalimdor tauren tech therefore is purely their own making, given the unchanged nature of it.
For that matter, Night Elves have their own engineering aspects both in ambitions in building and in my personal favorite, their awesome glaive throwers.
Also I really doubt Tauren would allow goblin engineers to do much of anything to their new capitol, seeing what their other inventions tend to do to the people/land around it.