Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment
With the release of World of Warcraft: Forever, many people are asking the same question: what race and class combos are best? For those wanting to maximise their WoW: Forever experience, key factors are damage output, how fast you can level, and bonuses to different professions.
Even here on Kyusai, we’ve had a crack at giving some guidance, but I’ve got some dissenting opinions. Firstly, you shouldn’t worry about min-maxing in WoW: Forever. Most of the fun is in the journey, in picking up whatever sounds interesting, and not worrying too much about efficiency. Secondly, the correct answer is always going to be to play a Tauren.
Gotta go fast
You’ve only got so many options when you play a Tauren, as you can pick up Druid, Hunter, Shaman, and Warrior. However, these are all great fun, and you can easily slot into whatever playstyle you feel like.
It’s almost irrelevant which class you pick, though, because the Tauren gives the same big bonus to all of them: Plainsrunning.
Plainsrunning is the Tauren’s main passive ability, which means that the longer you’re moving, the faster you go. This stacks up over time, until you’re moving a whole 60% faster than usual, the equivalent of a mount that you can only get at level 40. It makes travelling across Azeroth in the earlier levels so much easier, and I really cannot imagine trying to level in the Barrens as a species that didn’t have it.
That’s only the beginning of your Tauren super-speed, though. At level twenty, three of the Tauren’s classes come with an extra buff that increases their speed further. Shamans get their Ghost Wolf form, Hunters pick up Aspect of the Cheetah, and Druids get their cat form, which can pick up extra movement speed through the talent tree.
These all provide 30-40% movement speed, which gives you a big boost, and you still build up Plainsrunning. These effects sadly don’t stack, but when your Plainsrunning becomes faster than your extra movement speed, you take the faster of the two speeds.
The World of Warcraft is vast and exciting, but can take forever to travel across; with a Tauren you can explore to your heart’s content at speeds other players will be dreaming about.
Taking it easy
Tauren don’t just have it easier because they can run across the world really fast, of course. Tauren just have it better than other species when it comes to their racial abilities, especially as a casual player.
Endurance increases their health by 5%, not just making them great Tanks, but also generally able to handle the surprisingly brutal enemies around WoW: Forever.
To further add to their survivability and utility, all Tauren come with War Stomp, which can stun enemies around you for a couple of seconds. This stun can give you a moment to breathe, run away, or disrupt enemy spellcasters long enough to take them out. This can even be cast while you’re in different Druid forms, despite no longer having hooves to stomp with.
All Tauren also come with the Cultivation ability, which allows them to double down on their Herbalism. When they find an area of important flowers or brush to pick, they can spawn another. If you don’t want to pick up Herbalism as a profession, you can still pick the plant spawned by the Cultivation ability, meaning you can then sell those extra herbs on, or use them to create healing potions using First Aid.
Finally, Tauren just have an easier time with their capital city of Thunder Bluff. The other main Horde cities of Orgrimmar and Undercity are sprawling affairs and can be really annoying to navigate.
Thunder Bluff, meanwhile, is compact, easy to find your way around, and comes with some gorgeous views of the surrounding area due to being located on top of a Mesa. It’s just a better place to spend your time.
Com-moo-nity (sorry)
Really, though, one of the best reasons to roll a Tauren is because everyone around you is so nice. Especially on the Roleplay servers for World of Warcraft: Forever, there’s something about leveling through the Tauren starting zone of Mulgore that makes everyone really cheery.
The rolling hills of Mulgore seem to bring out the best in people as they happily share campfires, quest together, and talk to each other over the zone-wide general chat. Most of the community in World of Warcraft: Forever has so far been really quite lovely, but the Tauren come with an extra facet that allows players to lean into being silly.
Tauren, if you haven’t noticed, are cow people, and peaceful ones at that. Their whole vibe is about being at peace with the land, which is a big contrast to the Orcs, Trolls, and Undead that make up the rest of the Horde. The Tauren will fight, of course, but playing one naturally invites you to be more laid-back in how you act.
Plus, much like how a group of Wolves will start to howl, when you put a group of Tauren together in one place, it’s only so long before they start moo-ing together. It might seem kind of asinine and childish, but it comes off as something so endearingly social. WoW: Forever is a place where you’re meant to have fun and smell the flowers, and no race does it as well as the Tauren.
FAQs
In some senses, yes, as WoW: Forever is a remix of how World of Warcraft was when it first released. Classic tries to provide World of Warcraft exactly as it was, while Forever tries to deliver how it felt to first play WoW. The servers for Classic will still probably stay up, though.
It ultimately depends on what you want to get out of WoW.
Retail has the most content, the most interesting dungeons and raids, and the largest communities. Classic gives you the opportunity to relive moments in World of Warcraft’s history alongside other people. WoW: Forever gives the ability to play a slower version of the game that still has interesting new ideas.
Yes, World of Warcraft remains one of the most popular MMORPGs with consistent player numbers, and the WoW: Forever launch had the most concurrent players in WoW’s history.
