The Vulpera Problem

Lore Story Forum
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So the Vulpera have always kind of bothered me.

See most of the other ARs are just an existing race’s cool new cousin who’ll be joining the cast. So they don’t really need all that much to do.

If it’s an Orc story the Mag’Har aren’t going to feel out of place. Hell I typically can’t even tell the difference between Draenei Classic and Draenei Lemon Surge unless I’m paying close attention.

The Velves are probably just going to be standing behind the humans, looking less out of place now that they can all look like Alleria, doing nothing while they lead the story.

But that’s just the Alliance experience in general if we’re being honest.

The Vulpera though … what are they doing?

They’re not really anyone’s close friend or relative. They just roll up to Orgrimmar in a caravan, hire you to solve some minor problems, take credit for that, and then wham here’s your seat on the Monster Mash Security Counci.

To be clear I don’t mind them. They’re fine. Little fox dudes running around stabbing things with me. Sounds like a plan.

They just don’t really have their own speciality and they don’t slide in as interchangeable with any other existing race I kinda feel like they’re going to get neglected hard by the narrative.

I mean, if ya wanna know how it is out there for the races most lucrative to fan artists, ask the Worgen. Granted it’s not that bad. The Vulpera don’t have some huge unresolved plot thread that will go untied quite possibly forever at least.

But they’re just kind of these desert rebels fighting a bunch of cobra slavers that have a big lightning temple. And it really speaks to Zandalar’s quality that I think that’s the least interesting storyline. Don’t really come up that much afterwards. And then they’re just in Orgrimmar.

That’s just kinda nothing as storylines go. And unfortunately I don’t think it’ll get better than that.

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Vulpera actually don’t bother me because they evoke the spirit of the original (Thrall) Horde. They’re a bunch of outcasts trying to survive by working together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. And while their introduction to the Horde is somewhat lackluster, they make way more sense as allied races than the literal Iron Horde and the two dozen former blood elves who made a goth book club in space.

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For the record they don’t like annoy me or anything. They don’t look like they don’t belong in Orgrimmar. Though, to be fair, nothing doesn’t. The Hordes the most disparate team of odd couples in this genre. That’s why I love them and I’m happy to welcome the desert foxes to the team.

It’s just, that is pretty barebones as stories go. And there’s races that’ve gone without much spotlight in the narrative as is. And they can really only be background or secondary characters.

I don’t think the Cobras are going to be back anytime soon. And honestly monstrous slaver is kinda fantasy short hand for “insert bad guy here” so. Can’t say I need them to either.

You kind of need an antagonist to be a protagonist and they’ll have to share one with a more established race.

Just seems like squandered potential really.

On that note, yes the Iron Horde has a complicated history, but it’s important to remember that it was a different time. As in literally it was a different timeline, none of our guys got hurt, it’s fine.

And I loved running into the Velves on my Belf. The part of the Battle of Lordaeron where they turn up and Lor’Themar called them heretics was the only part of it I remember loving.

Mainly because it meant my Destro Lock could say;

So they’ve got a nemesis at least.

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Poised, I was not ready for this line at all!!

ILU for it tho.

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No, the Iron Horde being an allied race is the one decision they made that enrages me the most. That entire scenario is so aggravatingly bereft of logic that I’m convinced it was created only out of inherent spite for the playerbase and draenei as a lore race. There is functionally no difference between the Iron Horde we killed and the Iron Horde who join barring that they’re the next generation, and they’re losing.

We had Outland Mag’har, the real ones, right there with a host of great orc lore characters and instead we got Thrall’s genocidal alternate universe sister and a dude who likes to union bust peons as named characters.

Bad.

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I agree. But I’ve barely played WoD. And can’t really be assed too because you cannot canonically go to that region. So why do I care?

If you missed that expansion it really never comes up much.

Good point but as the Mag’Har are just there to be different colored Orcs in the story - I genuinely don’t care. It’s fine.

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Like who? A few old orcs and some children of legacy characters that most don’t remember.

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Seeing what we did from the Lightforged in their unlock quest it’s my head canon that universe is WoW’s version of the Mirror Mirror one from Star Trek where everybody’s a fascist.

So, they’ll chill out in this timeline with some positive influence. Sometimes our characters feel bad about their genocides. That’s a step up from remorseless mass murderer.

Not a big one but hey baby steps here.

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I mean I get it, people don’t like WoD and wish it never existed. But thematically, why would you not use industrialized, heavy metal orcs that carry some clan identity; over some tribal orcs that are another flavor of Thrall’s horde?

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Can’t argue with that, honestly.

Psycho dieselpunk Orcs are pretty rad. I’m fine with it. Those hamster wheels of death were fun as hell to drive.

This is genuinely what I hope we do with SL. Just give a duck mothering apology fruit basket to the Nelves and Forsaken, easily could do that while updating Quel’Thalas and Azuremyst Isles which desperately need an upgrade and to be added to the world map proper.

Then we move on. That’s all. Take whatever cool ideas work and we just don’t talk about the rest.

None of this is real we can just ignore the crap that didn’t work and keep moving.

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The Iron Horde wasn’t comprised of all of Draenor’s clans. The Horde playthrough makes it more obvious as it has you encounters Orc Clans that refused to join the Iron Horde and fight against it. We’re also 30 years since the Iron Horde collapsed, and a whole new generation or two of adult Orcs who were barely children or even alive when the Iron Horde existed.

The Mag’har =/= Iron Horde. The rest of the terribleness is more about how Blizzard has been writing Orcs and the treatment of Peons in general since Cataclysm. For example, Garrosh was a “real” Mag’har Orc from the OG timeline, and he’s the one who started the Iron Horde.

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I genuinely had no god damn idea what was going on in that quest. I only even started to see WoD content recently with the leveling experience update.

I enjoyed it but my Shaman was already like level 70 before the level crunch so I didn’t get that too far into it. Seemed alright from what I saw.

But before then I sped through it everytime. Because appruptly not having a flyer while going through old content is extremely unfun and I wasn’t going to do Pathfinder for a place that for all intents and purposes is no longer part of the setting.

Consequently my entire reaction to the quest was
“Alright guess this is happening now.”

You have a punch up with Garrosh’s time echo. Then you go through a portal. Then you’re arrested by Orc outriders. Then the Empire Strikes Back. Then you go out another portal and just - all of the Mag’Har came with you.

That sure was - something. Guess these dudes are here now. Sure why not

And like do our LForged have any clue who TF these people even are? Because I imagine the Mag’Har are going to hit them with particular gusto and I’d certainly be confused by a mortal enemy I’m just now being introduced to.

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BFA was a mess in many ways.

When BfA was first announced, the Allied Races featured as available at launch were Zandalari Trolls and Dark Iron Dwarves.

At some point between then and launch, they decided that Kul Tirans would be a better counterpart to Zandalari. So they started working on Kul Tirans, but that took so long that they couldn’t make launch and instead we got them and Zandalari later.

But they still have Dark Iron Dwarves ready to roll at launch, but now no Horde equivalent.

Hence them scraping together Mag’har Orcs - a long awaited option- made up largely of assets cribbed from the previous expansion and put into a scenario that likely would have been more (relatively) thought out and polished if they weren’t under as much pressure to crank it out by launch to match Dark Iron Dwarves.

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Honestly that adds up that fine.

I genuinely didn’t care that much. I actually recall someone datamining Sethrak in Alliance outfits. You meet friendly ones there on the Alliance that let you hang out in Vol’Dun.

So that seemed to be at least considered and in that context the Vulpera would make sense.

Honestly I was really crossing my fingers for the Forsaken to get leper gnomes as there AR. Would’ve made perfect sense with Mechagon and the body horror gnome AR.

Like I really do not mind them at all. But it seems like every other AR could be used to help expand on an existing faction’s story.

And the Vulpera are just kinda also here. Which is fine. They seem chill. But that’s about all I can say about them.

I guess I’m asking, whats their super power? What’s their big thing?

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Blizzard had announced during BFA development that they’d started designing NPCs more like PCs, which means they’d be able to customize them by just equipping them with stuff players could use and vice versa.

People took that and immediately started theorizing that every new race that came out was a potential new Allied Race.

I was rooting for Gilblin over Vulpera myself. We meet Gilblin at around the same time as Mechagnomes and that’s just the start of the parallels.

More importantly, neither one is so overwhelmingly appealing a concept that they’d blow all other options out of the water among players the way Vulpera and Void Elves did.

But Vulpera are here now and I’ve made my peace with the fact that Blizzard is probably not going to touch Goblins or Gnomes for a long time now. Despite them being the perfect way to do Red vs Blue without the hate and war crimes, as their rivalry is built more around non-violent economic competition or matters of pride and when they do bust out the weapons, it’s more likely to veer into silly slapstick.

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Well the Mag’Har are big into combustion engines too at least.

Maybe they can talk shop. There was a bit of that in Dazar’Alor.

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Courtesy of the Blackfuse Company.

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So I kind of half agree with you here.

If you want to think about it in the context of being the allied race version of goblins, they pretty much are in the exact same boat: “what resourcefulness can we bring to this international collaboration.”

A goblin built orgrimmar and did it as a contracter rather than as an ally, which is why goblins were a neutral faction for a long time (and some still are).

I think a really important aspect that vulpera bring to the horde is another culture that practices shamanism.

While alliance members have shamans too, the horde’s moral center is often strongly tied to shamanism and interactions with the elements. Creating an expansion that explores shamanism in a deep and meaningful way and how heavily it plays into horde culture would give taurens and orcs and trolls yet another meaningful race to have a spiritual dynamic with.

Goblins can be shamans as well but they have a much more warlocky approach to it.

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Yeah, turns out those real Mag’har that came across from Outland were mostly zealots for Garrosh, so most of them died in Siege of Orgrimmar. They were just another marker on the highway of Apparently Orcs Are Inherently Genocidal Regardless of Motive, Blood Curse, Timeline, or Circumstance.

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I feel like certain allied races just kind of stick out like sore thumbs because they’re just sorely underdeveloped lore-wise or they have been ham-fisted into current events only to become irrelevant to the story later. (Lightforged Draenei, anyone?)

As someone who race/faction changes regularly, I like having umpteen options but I am less inclined to pick certain races if their lore is practically non-existent. Did we even get something semi-developed for the Vulpera? I thought I read ‘something something Fox ancient’, but the fact that it doesn’t clearly stick out in my mind is an obvious problem. Hell, at this point I’d even accept lore development through archaeology items but even THAT has been abysmal as of late.

Blizzard has a habit of forgoing the typical fantasy tropes and adding ‘an unexpected twist’, like giving us Void Elves instead of the already well-developed option of High Elves without giving any thought to players who might want to learn more about the race that they’re actually playing. Hopefully Vulpera get some development, but I have to say I (sadly) second the notion that they’ll likely be background characters to any future story development.