Man, I'm Really Enjoying My Vulpera Rogue

The Vulpera are, obviously, adorable. Tiny fox-people who use fuzzy alpacas as their primary working animals - what's not to love?

But they are something of an oddity as far as allied races go. Mag'har Orcs, Dark Iron Dwarves, Zandalari Trolls - these have all had some sort of prominent position at least at some point in WoW's history. The Vulpera are a brand-new race as of Battle for Azeroth (and while they use a modified Goblin skeleton, they're not a "variant" like the other allied races are.)

Vulpera are, in fact, found only in Vol'dun and a few places in Tiragarde Sound as pirates. In any other expansion, they'd probably fill a role more equivalent to the Grummles of Pandaria or the Tuskarr in Northrend - a fun little animal race that we get to do quests with and then leave behind.

But now, they're a playable race, and a part of the Horde.

Admittedly, the status of allied races as core members of each faction remains a little ambiguous. Thalyssra and her Nightborne seem to be pretty prominent Horde members now (much to the chagrin of my Human Paladin who spent months helping them liberate themselves from the Legion...) But there hasn't been a ton of WoW's story dedicated to seeing how integrated the new allied races are into their factions.

Given the diversity of the world and the two factions both functioning as their own broad coalitions of people, it actually makes perfect sense to me that more people (especially given that most are related to existing races) would be joining up.

But the Vulpera really feel like a left-field entry.

Admittedly, you could compare them to the Void Elves - the Void Elves were an oddity in that they had not appeared at all in-game before they were added as a playable race. Alleria Windrunner was sort of their precedent, but she came by her void-y nature a different way, and does not have the blue-skin look of her Ren'dorei brethren, even if they look to her as a leader.

But the Void Elves have the benefit of, as individuals, having been part of Warcraft lore since WCII - though then they were High Elves, before becoming Blood Elves and then Void Elves. Indeed, the Void Elves' defection to the Alliance was really a return to their original faction. Even if at this point I'd just make playable Alliance High Elves just to get people to stop complaining, technically Void Elves fulfill that player desire (and frankly, once you get past how abruptly they were introduced, I think Void Elves are a lot cooler than High Elves would be.)

Anyway, Vulpera came in alongside Mechagnomes. Of course, the oddity of the Mechagnomes is that we've actually seen two types of creatures with that name - the originals, who were fully mechanical, and the new ones, which are really just gnomes who are essentially artificially reversing the curse of flesh through cybernetic augmentation. Given that we saw at least those originals starting in Wrath, I feel like Mechagnomes had the rough precedent to make them feel a little less jarring as a race we'll be carrying with us for WoW's foreseeable future.

But the thing is, I like the Vulpera. Their animations are good, and I love the desert-scavenger aesthetic they have. (I realize that you can remove the wagon-hood from the racial hyena mount using the "Make Camp" racial ability and clicking on the bag that appears next to the tent, but when I did, I realized that I actually liked it with the hood up.)

I'd initially been holding back one allied race alt to make sure I could try out the new starting zone when 9.0 hits, but then remembered that allied races skip that, so instead I just started it up. I'm playing him as Outlaw (after a brief attempt to enjoy Assassination) and while it's been lots of fun (things get way more interesting once you get Roll the Bones) it's kind of crazy to me that Fan of Knives, Shuriken Storm, and Blade Fury don't come until level 63 - other than multi-dotting with Rupture or Nightblade, this is your only multi-target skill, and so it means that until you're a bit into Outland/Northrend, dungeons are going to make you feel really weak (if you're watching damage meters.)

But, with the quarantine buff up, I've managed to get this guy to level 62 in just a few days, so soon that issue will be moot.