The Unofficial Saurok Playable Race Discussion Megathread! 🐊

I’ve been thinking about the Allied Race system, specifically its purpose in terms of world-building, and wanted to ramble a bit on it.

Before TWW was revealed, most people would say that the Allied Race system was dead because the Horde and Alliance weren’t at war any more, so there wasn’t a point to it. However, I disagree with that argument, as there would be reasons a race would want to join the Horde or Alliance and those factions wanting new members while not necessarily being for war purposes.

Sometimes it could be through a mutual benefit for each other. A good example could be the Keflin and Ankoan, where they would want to join their respective faction for safety, seeing as Azshara is out there and up to no good. In return, the Horde and Alliance get members that would be able of doing underwater missions or working as shipwrights in case underwater repairs need to happen. Not to mention being able to help protect ships from things like Naga attacks or being able to sabotage pirate ships attempting to loot.

Another example was a scenario I thought I would type up for fun one of these days. Imagine if a giant looming threat to the world (of Warcraft!) was inevitable, and the mass destruction from it would be worse than these forums on a Sunday. I can imagine the Horde and Alliance seeking out denizens of Azeroth, trying to recruit members so that the chances of winning over this threat would be higher. I mean, living is pretty awesome and 4 out of 6 doctors agree that being on a planet not having been blown up and subjugated by evil forces is much better for your health long term.

Not to mention that getting those races in your faction means more territory, resources, and units for these regular threats to the world (of Warcraft!) that seem to pop up every so often. And while the chances of war between the Horde and Alliance will be very low going forward, it doesn’t hurt to grow your faction in case that happens again.

It’ll be interesting to see the Earthen’s reasoning for joining both factions. I’m sure they would learn about the history of the many great Horde and Alliance kerfuffles, and I doubt they would want to fight each other in a war, much like how the Dracthyr would feel I assume. It’s something I think I’ll be covering when I see how the Earthen are implemented, which I have quite a list of things to report back here on.

When it comes to Saurok, whether as a Core Race or Allied Race, I’ll have to focus more on the benefits for them joining the Horde and the Horde letting them in. It can be a bit hard, since there would be a lot of context sensitive aspects depending on what would happen with their storyline, but there is plenty to type up with this line of thinking. Although, it will be a bit weird to think less of them being RAWR to the Alliance
ok, sure, they’ll want to eat their faces when it comes to PvP, but you know what I mean.

I think one of the keys for the mutual benefits would be that evil Mogu clans hound the playable Saurok faction that the Horde can help with while the Saurok might have artifacts and such from Mogu vault raids that could be pretty handy. Especially if they might be interesting things to study if we have to go and beat up any evil titans in the near future. Not to mention having a race that can swim and work well in places like swamps could be very handy. But then again, as I mentioned, a lot depends on any storylines involving them.

Anyway, war isn’t really needed to have the Horde and Alliance seek out allies. At least not between the two factions. There can be benefits outside of combat that can come from joining a faction. We’ll see how the Allied Race system is handled for different races and their motivations for wanting to join the Horde or Alliance and those factions letting them join as well.

I’m sure I’ll be able to type up many benefits for Saurok joining the Horde of course, both for in-game and for us players IRL. After all, this is a megathread on the subject. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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One of the customization features of the Earthen is the option to have gems protruding out of their body. While a neat idea, one flaw (the idea and not the gems themselves) is when they wear most armor, as it hides those customization features. More often than not, that leaves the Earthen looking like a Dark Iron Dwarf who ate one too many beer battered pork ribs and got a bad case of food poisoning. But it’s something to think about with Saurok. And no, I don’t mean the food poisoning.

A lot of customization features we’ve discussed before for playable Saurok would likely get hidden with most armor. This ranges from horns on the head to spikes over the body and so on that would likely be hidden under most armor. Whats a lizard who wants to look fashionable to do?

In all fairness, it is something to be expected and is something that seems like it would be hard to work around with WoW’s current engine. It is possible some horns and spikes could still stick out through armor and even helmets, but I imagine the easier thing to program would be to hide those features.

Of course, it wouldn’t be for all armor. There could be some types of helms that let Saurok have horns out. There are also some less bulky armor that lets some customization features like spikes also get shown. Though with spikes, a lot would have to depend on how it looks too whether they should be sticking out of armor or not.

It can also affect Saurok tails, depending on armor graphics. Some armors I could see the tails sticking out bare while others, I could see most of the tail also having armor graphics. Granted, a lot would depend on how armor would be coded for them.

I know that Blizzard uses an AI to help design armor on race models, and I’d assume that just hiding features would be the easier thing to do do. If anything, some armor sets could look great without a helm graphics, like cloth caster classes, so it wouldn’t be for naught to give your Saurok some awesome customization options.

Ultimately, I expect playable Saurok to have some customization options hidden by armor graphics. It’s a reasonable expectation, and I’m sure there will be ways around it. Much how there may be ways around letting Earthen customization show. It shouldn’t hinder playable Saurok chances at all or any race that would have quite a bit of customization options, but it is something worth noting. Customization options are still important to have, even if they could be hidden fairly easily.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to gather the Chaos Emeralds so I can stick them into my future Earthen so he can go super Dwarf and beat up evil scientists with fancy facial hair and too much time and money that want to build a robotic army by subjugating the local woodland critters. :gem:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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When it comes to new playable races, there is a question of what faction they will go to and what the opposite faction would get. This assumes that said playable race wouldn’t be neutral of course, and Saurok could very well become neutral if they ever playable playable. However, if they were a playable Horde only race, the question of what the Alliance would get would start rising like a loaf of delicious cinnamon raisin bread in the oven.

While a lot would depend on where the playable Horde Saurok faction would reside, I have been pondering on if the Rajani Mogu would make for a good Alliance counterpart.

This is something I feel like would’ve made a lot of sense during BfA, assuming the return to Pandaria was expanded more and we got another playable race pair out of it. Both races being enemies (at the time) of each other and fitting their respective factions while giving them a foothold during a huge kerfuffle war, even if that was starting to die down. Bit of a missed opportunity to not do that, but then again, BfA is more or less the poster child of missed opportunities. Especially since the patch was around the time BfA was being rushed out the door for Shadowlands (sigh
). A shame that Saurok were relegated to being feral-like again there while we had Chen losing his mind over his booze being wasted instead of freeing any of the enslaved Saurok that could’ve helped out. Why yes I’m still as bitter as his booze ingredients. How could you tell? :stuck_out_tongue:

Nowadays with the whole armistice and the Horde and Alliance moving to being more friendly with each other, I could still see the pair working out well. Just not quite antagonistic, since we’d be seeing Saurok and Mogu work together in the future after they were introduced as playable races
which is quite the sentence I never thought I’d ever type in here, but the game is an evolving one, and thoughts like these have to be typed out as one of many potential things.

For this pairing to work, another return to Pandaria would need to happen and likely another rise of evil Mogu clans or just a clan would occur. The Rajani Mogu would not have had anything to do with the whole Saurok creation and indentured servitude thing, and if anything, would be more open to helping the Saurok, possibly to stick it to the evil Mogu clans who went into business for themselves in history much to the Rajani Mogu’s chagrin. Perhaps if there was something like a degenerative disease coming from the flesh shaping magic that the Rajani Mogu could help with or if the evil Mogu were dead set on trying to wipe the Saurok out and rip their spirits out for another round of forced servitude, that could open the playable Saurok tribe to getting help and working with the Rajani Mogu. Definitely some possibilities here.

Having them on separate factions works in the storyline. Horde work with Saurok since they fit that faction extremely well while the Rajani Mogu work with the Alliance since their ideals would be a bit more fitting with them. Both the Horde and Alliance work together to try and mend things over, which leads into everyone working together to take down the big bad of the storyline or expansion.

On the Saurok side of things, they could have artifacts and such from the evil Mogu clans that were important for storyline reasons and would have been perfecting how to combat the evil Mogu through various tactics, in which when given a blood sworn enemy that wants to do some really not nice things to you, you kinda learn a thing or two about them for survival. This can be combined with general knowledge that the Rajani Mogu would have in order to take down the evil Mogu clan and save Pandaria and the world (of Warcraft!). Again. Woo.

After that, both races see the true meaning of Winter Veil in some way and are willing to work with each other in the future while working with their respective factions in order to help protect the world (of Warcraft!) from more and more world (of Warcraft!) ending threats that seem to arise every so often for a fee in your local IRL currency.

Obviously, a lot needs to be fleshed out here (without the use of flesh shaping magic). It’s not something that would need to immediately be in a patch, but something that would need to have both races warm up to each other, which is a reason why they would be on opposite factions. It’s not entirely impossible to write around either and could make for an interesting story that would have both a playable Saurok tribe and the Rajani Mogu needing to work together.

So what do y’all think? This is just one of many potential ideas I wanted to share, but Saurok for the Horde and Rajani Mogu for the Alliance sounds like an interesting pair with some storyline potential. And both have some ties with the titans, though one moreso than the other, so it could fit with the current narrative of the World Soul Saga.

Honestly, as long as I get playable Horde Saurok, I’m fine with whatever the Alliance would get or even neutral Saurok. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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I apologize for not having posted for awhile. I have unfortunately lost one of my dogs to a sudden health problem and have not been in the best of mindset for awhile. I would like to ask any pet owners that whatever pets you own, present and future, to make sure to give them lots of love and care each day. You never know when life will rear its ugly head and decide to take them, sadly.

But anyway, something I noticed was that there is a WoW Chronicle Volume 4 coming out July 16th of this year
which if you recall, is the series that Blizzard put out to be definitive lore books, only to retcon several things about it.

This volume is said to be “encompassing story insights and lore from Mists of Pandaria, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, Battle for Azeroth, and Shadowlands” So for Saurok purposes, there is some importance to it, though since it is more lore-related as opposed to current day stuff like with Exploring Azeroth: Pandaria, there might not be a whole lot new here. And even then, anything could get retconned at any point.

If you want more info, Wowhead has an article on the book being available for preorder here:

I’ll be adding it to my wishlist for now. Whenever I do get it, I’ll be sure to go over it and report back anything of interest. Gotta keep up with the Saurok research, ya know! Even if there might not be much new here. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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Best of wishes and hoping to see some Saurok news soon, I will always be a firm believer of how there are so many chances to expand their story in a very interesting way.

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A winner is me! :partying_face:

So with the latest patch, one of the cinematics heavily hints that the Void is likely to be a problem in the future
which we kinda knew that already, but it’s still interesting to see confirmation of it. I thought I would ramble a bit again on Saurok and void stuff.

As a reminder, there has been some loose connections to the void with Saurok. Mostly their belt buckles on some of the NPC models has that thingie that looks like an eye of Nzoth, as seen here:

And of course the Saurok Stalker armor set has two of those eye thingies:

Which is odd since Exploring Azeroth: Pandaria mentions they’re created by Hunters to resemble Saurok, so I don’t know why they would add those eyes on there unless they had the Darkmoon Faire on the mind.

It’s still an odd thing to see with Saurok. I haven’t seen any connection to them and the Void aside from that one fallen chieftain mob in the BfA version of Vale of the Eternal Blossom
kinda:

So there is still a bit of a mystery of any connection between Saurok and the Void. It’s a bit worrying, since any Saurok that would fall into the Void’s power would likely be antagonists, though I doubt this would apply to every living Saurok is that were the case. It’d likely be just one group of them in such a situation. As I said, there isn’t much of a link between Saurok and the void, and I’d prefer any playable Horde Saurok we get, it’d be regular Saurok as opposed to something like Void Saurok.

I did try to see if there was any connection between the Void and the Mogu, and I saw a random comment on the MMO-Champion forums mention one of the reasons they were made by the Titans was to fight the void. I couldn’t confirm this looking at Mogu lore, but it’d be kinda interesting that one of their creations would’ve leaned towards something the Mogu were suppose to fight against. Just an interesting thought.

While there seems like storyline opportunities to have Saurok and Mogu involved in the future, I can’t say how likely it would be within the next three expansions. Still, Void stuff could have a possibility for Saurok stuff in general, and who knows? Maybe not all Void stuff we deal with in the future will be evil and want to rearrange our internal organs. I mean, Void Elves are a thing after all, and they’d rather rearrange the internal organs of our enemies instead of us
mostly.

I don’t see the Void as an important theme for Saurok or there being much of a link, but it’s still something to consider. And if we have to fight enemy Void Saurok, it wouldn’t mean there wouldn’t be a tribe somewhere out there that could be friendly that we could meet in the future. But we’ll see what happens when we get through each of the next 3 expansions. I know I’ll be there to report any findings, for better or worse. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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A few years ago, I made a post on this Saurok samurai you can fight in a small dungeon-like thing. If you want more info on that mob, you can see the post here:

I was thinking some about this Saurok before, and while this was mostly done in jest with samurai tropes, it’s still notable to see Saurok become something like a samurai. We haven’t seen it in any of the other tribes, but maybe it’s something that could be applied to future Saurok tribes/clans.

As I mentioned before, it takes a lot of work to have become a samurai IRL, so to see Saurok capable of becoming one, especially during MoP, is pretty notable. We also know the Glintrok tribe has a sense of honor, so it isn’t impossible at all to see other Saurok take up the way of the samurai.

What do y’all think? Saurok samurai in the playable Saurok faction sounds kinda cool, doesn’t it? It could give a unique feature to their tribe to have samurai within their ranks. Maybe even have a few become wandering samurai, looking something like this:

Makes me wish we could get more character slots so I can make a Saurok samurai character in the future if they ever become playable. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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Hope they add this one day! We need a new ‘monster’ race, and the Saurok are ripe with lore.

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Imgur
(Saurok Warrior - Sk-8080)

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My Saurok will be a hunter who wants to taste and eat all the recipes in the Horde (and Alliance if he can get them).

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Yeah, wouldn’t it have been nice if the lizard-person option we got came with a female option, instead of just four males? And before you all bust out your 5th grade biology textbooks for your “reptiles don’t have boobs” business, dragonkin have had a female model, with your dreaded lizard boobs, since launch, heck probably since the RTS games. They’re still in the game if you want to go look.

In the Elder Scrolls series, there are instances of Argonians that have breasts in some instances. So there are definitely examples of reptilian races that have them.

However, in my own personal opinion, I do feel that female Saurok shouldn’t have them. I know Dracthyr don’t, though their dragon forms were meant to be non-binary since they’re used for male and female Dracthyr, so I can understand why they wouldn’t add that to them from a design point-of-view.

For Saurok, however, I feel like it’s an unnecessary design that really would be questionable and made fun of as opposed to complimenting the design. You can have a great female reptilian design without that, and the focus should be on making Saurok look ferocious and someone you wouldn’t want to mess with as opposed to making lizard waifus.

Again, all in my own personal opinion.

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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Came across a pretty neat art piece on DeviantArt to share once again. This one is of a Dragonborn Cleric with a lighting affinity of some sort. It was created by lordsenneian and was uploaded to the website on May 26th, 2016.

“Dragonborn Cleric” by lordsenneian on DeviantArt

Something this image made me think of is if some Saurok managed to utilized electric powers, much like how the evil Mogu clans have done before. Something about Saurok doing that as a way to spite the evil Mogu seems fitting.

The image sorta makes me imagine Saurok Paladins in a way. You think Thunder Knights would fit that as a name for them in a way? Not sure if electricity would fit the theme of Paladins in general, but if the playable faction of Saurok took over the Isle of Thunder, it’d be kinda interesting to see them as a thing.

Anyway, it’s a neat concept that I wanted to mention on here. Not sure if the whole thunder motiff fits Saurok as a whole, but still fun to think of. And as usual, I’ll keep an eye out on any Lizardman or Lizardman-like related art pieces to share for playable Horde Saurok idea inspiration! :zap: :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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Next month’s Trading Post items have been announced:

The item you earn from doing enough tasks is this transmog set:

Also, there will be 500 bonus tenders to earn next month:

Nothing Saurok related as usual, which as I say each month, I don’t really expect there to be anything. Still, you never know. Maybe with March, my birthday month, we’ll see something of interest if we’re lucky. But we’ll see, and I’ll keep reporting each month’s Trading Post items regardless. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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This lizard wizard is working on a magic spell to summon Saurok to the Horde side of that character creation screen! It’s a pretty big spell to prepare for, but you can help raise the chances of success!

With the beginning of each month, I make in-game suggestions for each race I want to see playable along with a mention of their respective megathreads on these forums. While it is far from a guarantee of seeing our dreams come true, I do think every little bit helps, and doing it monthly I feel is reasonable and not that intrusive or annoying.

If you’re interested in doing the same for races you want to see playable, I made a little guide on how to do so in-game here:

What a magical feeling it would be to finally have playable Horde Saurok! :magic_wand::lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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Got another art piece from DeviantArt to share! This one is of a Lizardfolk Dark Cleric, which was created by ThaiTrieu and uploaded to the website on Oct. 22nd, 2020.

“[Commission artwork] Brok the Dark Cleric” by ThaiTrieu on DeviantArt

The armor design is something I could see being very Saurok-like. Given that Saurok likely could hunt dinosaurs, whether it’s the ones on the Isle of Giants or if Saurok ever went to Un’goro Crater, it would make sense to see them make some armor out of it. I especially like the triceratops skull helmet.

I could also see Saurok having dinosaur bones as a cloak transmog item. Not entirely sure what it would be for in terms of practicality, but something about that seems like very fitting imagery. In general, the art piece is pretty great for skull armor imagery, which is something we’ve discussed many times throughout the megathread.

As usual, I’ll keep an eye out for more art pieces to share for playable Horde Saurok idea inspiration. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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Had an interesting video in my YouTube recommendations about a type of lizard that is capable of forming an air bubble underwater to use as an air tank:

I wanted to share this because I see Saurok being able to utilize a similar tactic depending on the lizard they came from with the flesh shaping magic from the Mogu.

I can imagine Saurok staying underwater for an extended peroid of time and waiting for the right moment to strike or when danger has gone away and it is safe to come out. Something about this imagery seems really fitting for them. Maybe this could help explain a bit how some Saurok are capable of traveling long distances in the ocean by swimming also. I mean, magic could be part of it too, but it’s still fun to think about.

Just a fun video I wanted to share with a fun idea of cunning Saurok tactics. :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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The mysterious patch 10.2.6 is planned to come out sometime in March:

As you may know, this is the patch on the roadmap that just has that pirate-looking banner, leading to a lot of speculation. I’m honestly not sure what all to expect, other than something pirate related.

In terms of Saurok, I’d be surprised if there was anything involving them. Even then, it’s possible they’d be enemy pirates or something. But who knows what this patch will even be? Best to temper expectations in general.

Although, since this patch takes place in my birthday month, maybe we’ll get lucky. Getting playable Horde Saurok would be an epic birthday gift
 :pirate_flag: :lizard:

-Playable Saurok for the Horde please! :meat_on_bone::crocodile:

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