World of Warcraft gets Earthen Allied Race for Horde and Alliance in The War Within expansion

The War Within is getting a new Allied Race: the Earthen. If you like Dwarves, you probably like the Earthen — in World of Warcraft these rock and stone fellows are the origin of the Dwarves, their literally named elemental forebears. We’ve known about the Earthen for a long time, but in The War Within the Isle of Dorn is the home of a newly discovered subsect of Earthen who have been isolated from the other Earthen in places like Ulduar for literally tens of thousands of years.

Earthen were created by the Titanforged Keepers to help repair the damage to Azeroth caused when the Titans sent the Titanforged to defeat the Elemental Lords and their Old God masters. This particular group of Earthen were first mentioned in Observational Report: Earthen discovered in the Uldaman Legacy of Tyr dungeon in Dragonflight. Unlike their Dwarven kinfolk, these Earthen have remained socially isolated and with a more direct sense of following the Titan’s will.

In the upcoming expansion, we encounter these isolationist Earthen, whose society is broken up into multiple factions who disagree on how they should follow their ancient Edicts. These Titan directives are the cornerstone of their society, but now they’re suffering from disagreements on how they should follow the Titans’ will, and we encounter these three subgroups of Earthen — the Oathsworn, the Unbound, and the Machine Speakers — and of course being Azerothian adventurers we immediately stick our noses in their business and get embroiled in the schism between their three groups, and also their declining Earthen population.

However, this seemingly ends up with us fixing their problems — or at least enough of them — and thus unlocking the Earthen as a new Allied Race for both the Horde and the Alliance. This will be one of the easiest Allied Races to unlock, only requiring you to complete The War Within campaign — there are no reputation requirements or any other hoops to jump through. We know that these Earthen are tied into the story of how we descend into Azeroth and find out the source of The War Within‘s main story, so the unlock requirement makes a lot of sense.

Earthen will be able to play almost any class: Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, Monk, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior. That’s everything except Demon Hunter, Druid, and Evoker, so Earthen have a broad range of gameplay options.

The race is visually impressive, too, with a host of customizations — gemstones in their flesh, rock beards, and so on — to give players of either faction a unique look. Will they look cool with two giant swords? Almost certainly.

Earthen will be joining the game in The War Within, due out next year.