The last days made it quite hard again to play a Vulpera so I wanted to share why I play one and why especially Vulpera have to be played carefully:
First of all at a very basic level, Vulpera are nomads and that by itself creates a feeling of Freedom that is hard to achieve in most guild concepts.
Being a Nomad then paired with the fact that many Vulpera just recently left Voldun and simply don’t know the world of Azeroth makes travelling itself an Adventure to the unknown. To roads not travelled and mountains not climbed.
The next big reason is one that gets forgotten far too often: Voldun is a horrible place and the people that come from there, the Voldunai (which against common belief aren’t just the Vulpera btw) are survivors. They have to endure a land where you could get eaten by a Krolusk at any second, where giant Bees lay eggs inside your skin, where the army of the Faithless marched on their eternal hunt for slaves and where you could even find remnants of the old gods cursing old ruins hidden beneath the sands. A Land where even aside from all that simply surviving itself and not dying of thirst or hunger is hard. That all then leads to the reason why Vulpera are scavengers and so resourceful. Not just because they are whacky “cute” bandits or treasure hunters but because they had to do so for their entire life to even have a chance of surviving. So despite their looks (and unspoken examples that sing of their Alpacas…) Vulpera should be anything but cute in their behavior.
Which to be fair is the next point and not one for me personally but I don’t judge people who do like them for that reason. From all the allied races, they are the only true new one. The rest is just new flavors (even if the lore differences behind those flavors are quite big).
And speaking of lore we have to talk about the nonexistent elephant in the room. Vulpera don’t have enough lore and were a mere afterthought by Blizzard because a chart told them that Furry=Moneyz. I can’t and won’t argue against that but give my own reason why that was actually a positive for me (the lore part…). When I started rp I wasn’t a lorehead. I simply didn’t have the insight many of those that are on this server for years have. So to not step on any toes and have an Ic reason to not know much lore I choose to play the race that not only doesn’t have much lore by themself but also just recently came to the wider world of Azeroth. A Vulpera fresh from the ship with no Idea aside from the fact that the horde fought at their side and the alliance burned their wagons. But with not much lore to cling on to, there comes this fine line between headcanon and backstory, because what was your caravan’s name? What made it special? And why aren’t you with them anymore? Since we don’t have the luxery of an Orc or a Tauren who can chose a clan or a tribe we have to come up with something of our own, that flavors it a bit more aside from “just a normal caravan” and I have seen many cool Ideas people had for their old caravans: Krolusk riders that hid in the sandstorm, rebels against the slavers eaten up by rage and one that simply travelled the shores and traded with pira…sailors (the last one’s mine 
). But it also invites some that go too far. That see it as a free card to create entire new subraces and simply ignore the few bits of information we have on the Vulpera. Overall it is fun to play into that freedom of creating your own caravan and even own themed classes to a degree (says the dunecaller) but every fantasy is just as good as the boundaries that hold it together, so be careful if you want to tap into it and be ready and open for critique, at least when you want to play with others (in this mmo…).
The next question often ask, is why they are a horde race, which is quite clear to me but still lets ask it. Aside from the fourth war that brought them into the conflict, let’s take a look at the first Vulpera the champion meets in the story. She takes a skull from their enemies as her helmet, roars in bestial vigor and plants her people’s bannor in the dead bodies of her enemy. If that isn’t enough then let’s look at their wagons and the tails that hang from there and even though we can only speculate, whatever reason you come up with for that, it screams horde and not alliance.
So in general, there are reasons to play a Vulpera and we all have our own for that. The reason I do this thread is to assure you that not all of this race is cursed erp and that there are a few safe havens out there. You just have to be very careful in finding them (since I am completely biased in that regard I won’t mention any) and by the freaking dunes, just show some decency. Every Vulpera erp (or worse…) makes it harder for all of us who fight against that cliche.
So keep that in mind, follow the dunes and may our roads cross one day.
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Thank you kindly for this thread - very well-put, and insightful, and wholly appreciated a read! I haven’t really managed to find anything I could add, and even though I roleplayed a vulpera since they’re in the game, I cannot call myself a master of it.
Personally, for me, the (so far) lacking lore was helpful as a crutch, starting RP, as it was a bit more lenient backstory-wise. I took that small, often vague amount of lore as the anchor points to build upon.
I do hope everyone gets to read / ruminate on all this, and even add their own points if they have them! Good stuff right here.
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This is one of the main reasons I went for the Vulpera as well - there is not a single other playable race (barring maybe Pandaren, but even them not as much in recent years) that is as much of a “blank slate” in terms of awareness of the world as them, which brings with it an enormous amount of freedom.
That freedom is as much of a blessing as it is a curse, especially when factoring in the near-complete lack of lore outside what is being told through the Vol’dun storyline and the one mention so far in Folk & Fairytales of Azeroth.
You can run rild with your concept and backstory in a way that is difficult to achieve with any other race, but it’s also incredibly easy to get drawn into a direction that simply doesn’t fit them or the little lore they have.
Personally, I love this freedom, and I love the Vulpera as a whole despite their admittedly shoehorned inclusion into the roster of playable races. And even though portraying a Vulpera correctly (as in, not a cliché cutesy furry UwU-whatever you want to call it) is pretty simple if you give even half a thought of who and what they are, many unfortunately still struggle to look past the obvious facade of “oh look, cute small fox, I must pet it” that has been plaguing the Vulpera players since day one and will likely continue to plague them for all eternity.
That is not going to discourage me from playing them and enjoying every second of it - if anything, I see it as a challenge to prove that it can be done well. And I’m certain I’m not the only one to think so.
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I don’t know how common or uncommon it is, but personally I absolutely adore their tent racial. With other nomadic groups like tauren you either have to find specific spots with NPCs/buildings to represent a camp, or just imagine that they’ve brought everything with them, but with vulpera you can literally keep a tent in a visible location permenantly as long as you have at least two of them, and it’s some of the cosiest looking roleplay I’ve seen. Granted I think this is a much smaller positive point than some of the ones listed previously, but you guys were really thorough with covering reasons to play a vulpera already.
Also if you want to roleplay as Bear Grylls doing all sorts of grotesque stuff like sleeping in animal carcasses for warmth then you can 100% do that with vulpera, they’re survivors of a harsh land after all.
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The greatest racial ever and no one will convince me otherwise - even though I’m still salty that the cooldown is twice as long as the duration.
Why, Blizzard. 
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Clearly it’s to encourage vulpera to always travel in groups of pairs at a minimum. Don’t be a lone wolf fox.
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It is already very great for rp but even ooc when levelling or farming it is so useful. I mean you can change your talents basically everywhere since your tent is a safe spot, you can even deactivate warmode for some reason without honour.
And the fact that you can always travel back to your tent (though only once in an hour) you have sometimes even more freedom then a mage. I have alts that placed their tent in front of raids so I can go and farm easily.
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Vulpera are dope AF yo, errbody got time fo dat
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Allow me to tell you the story of two giga-chads of Vulpera within the ranks of the Ebon Blade, Our boys Zomba and Rhaako joined the EO as initiates. Risen after that horrid little incident with the Alliance burning the caravans (Oopsie)
Rhaako became the toughest guy on the block and beat people twice his size and Zomba is now our headsmith making the best stuff and also being a walking fireball, Hell Zomba is to this day the fastest one when it came to aquiring his Deathcharger and nobody beat his time yet. (And they are amazing throwing Projectiles.)
So yeah if you just THINK and do your stuff well a Vulpera can even gain respect and tolerance within the Ebon Blade. These two are the best examples of that going from Zero to hero.
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Oh i almost forgot. I was the one who trained them from initiate to knight and let me tell you i was particulairly harsh on them cause they joined not long after the Allied races were allowed to be Death knights and my character thought that the Vulpera were unready and too ignorant to fight against threats larger then that of Vol’dun, (Legion, Void, Scourge and that stuff.)
Good to be proven wrong.
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Once upon a time on PTR, Make Tent had no cooldown… 
I don’t have much to add to what’s already been said, but piggybacking off of what Onkuru mentioned, one of the most fun aspects of playing a Vulpera is the sense of discovery as both an individual character and a community - to explore and to survive through sheer cunning and resourcefulness.
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Big agree to a lot of these posts. I will argue that “cute” can still be a thing to a certain degree, I’m not talking uwu GLOMP though. People have to remember that under someone’s cheerful exterior is a skilled survivor, not some purse pooch that you can pat.
Normalize vicious maulings at unwarranted patting.
One of the main problems is that some just use Vulpera as a self insert for furry roleplay without paying any attention to their background. They are easy to spot a mile away.
Oh and one more thing, those tails on the wagons are herbs! At the Whistlebloom Oasis there are foxflower like herbs growing by the water. Now of course you can say, with the freedom around lore, that one caravan might venerate their dead by keeping tails of loved ones.
Every caravan is different after all.
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Is it actually stated that the tails on the wagons are those?? Or just a theory? Never heard that before (and don’t like it personally^^) but if its the lore behind it I will play it like that from now on.
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That’s the thing, it isn’t outright stated but those herbs are orange like all the tails on the wagons.
But either concept can be true and that’s the flexibility of it all.
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Well, it’s the lore for those particular caravans. There’s nothing to stop the Dustpaw from creating their own custom to honour their fallen. It’s kind of the nice thing with vulpera that you can justify a lot of little rituals or traditions by saying it’s something isolated to one particular group of travellers.
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I mean tbf it usually doesn’t happen that we get a tail to the wagon, but its still good to know. Thx for sharing that!
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I have to give this mention as well, if you play vulpera and haven’t, yet, look into the story “Lay down my bones” from that story collection, everyone!
I’d describe it as ‘hardcore’, and is a superbly fun and interesting read, and adds to vulpera lore a few things that I could very comfortably integrate into my own shaman’s roleplay!
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